


Kisses Taste Like Mint

by Katranga



Series: A Scenic Route to Love [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, First Kiss, Growing Up, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pining Richie Tozier, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Medication, bed sharing, flashbacks to childhood, mild homophobia, no memory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-07 15:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 70,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21460249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katranga/pseuds/Katranga
Summary: Somewhere in the back of Richie's mind, he knew he was supposed to be kissing a girl. But girls didn’t want anything to do with him. And Eddie was right here, and his best friend, and he'd rather be kissing Eddie than any girl in their class anyway. Not that he'd ever, ever admit it.--They killed the clown, survived high school, and escaped to different colleges, but the Losers still miss each other. And Richie? Richie hasn't thought about kissing Eddie in years. Canon-based college au where they don't lose their memories after leaving Derry.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: A Scenic Route to Love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606585
Comments: 214
Kudos: 612
Collections: reddie for me





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I have this whole fic written already, I'll just be doing edits as I post weekly chapters. It's 50k right now, with every possibility of growing as I polish it up.  
My relationship with canon is like I saw her in a grocery store once? But I don't know her. This fic is based off the first movie and whatever I've read on tumblr, because I haven't watched the second movie, the miniseries, and I sure as hell haven't read the book. That said, I think I've got the characterization right, at least for Richie and Eddie. Please let me know!  
So, just off the top, they don't lose their memories, so they stay fucked up over it all.  
Enjoy!

It started before the fucking murder clown. It ended after, because Richie couldn’t even think about their stupid game without flinching. Sure, the Loser’s Club shoved the personification of fear down a well, but that didn’t mean terror wasn’t rooted in his bones like a cavity. 

He fought to survive in those sewers. He refused to get stoned to death by neighbours and classmates for being something he definitely _ wasn’t _.

But did he used to kiss Eddie Kaspbrak? Yeah. They were best buds, they did everything together. 

They don’t anymore; they go to school in different cities. They don’t do much of anything together.

Richie’s mom once said that his friends brought out the best in him, which was all at once a roaring approval for his friends, and a staggering indictment of Richie’s character. As if without Bill and Stan and everybody else’s responsible, polite influences to steer him in the right direction, Richie would regularly be eating out of the dumpster. 

From that one observation, he got the impression that his mom preferred him away with the losers rather than with her in the house running around and demanding her attention.

So after he finishes freshman year, he stays in New York because he doesn’t want to go back to Derry, and Derry doesn’t want him back either.

But he’s missing the losers’ influences, so when Bill mentions in a letter that they should all get together, Richie’s the driving force in convincing them of a New York trip.

And it works. 

A week before their second year starts, they congregate in the big apple, and it’s the happiest Richie had been since they were all last together in Derry.

Which doesn’t reflect great on his state of mind or mental wellbeing, or whatever, because he’d spent all high school convincing himself that everything would turn around once he hit college, but he keeps looking back at what he’s running away from.

And if he examines that too hard he feels disjointed, all bones and gristle with no connective tissue. Like a shark, if his thoughts stop moving and hover on one thing too long, he’ll lose the ability to breathe.

That breathlessness sticks in his lungs the whole time Eddie’s around for their New York trip. 

Eddie hates the city—how would he not hate New York, with its rats, and subways, and garbage? But he still came.

His dark eyebrows frame the perpetual worry clouding his eyes perfectly, but if Richie takes off his glasses, then Eddie looks so serene on the ferry ride back from the Statue of Liberty. 

The sea breeze ruffles his hair, still short enough that it doesn’t want to curl. His smooth skin almost glows in the sun. And his shoulders are definitely broader than the last time Richie saw him. Is he really becoming an adult? A man? Richie can’t believe it.

The rest of them are taller and whatever too, growing out of baby faces into visages that might not get ID’d buying beer one day, but it’s not noteworthy that anyone else is growing up. Not to Richie.

Eddie finishes off his third bottle of hand sanitizer and rattles off all the diseases he guesses originated in New York—factual accuracy’s not important. Nobody’s listening anyway. Well, Richie’s listening, but he’s not processing. He’s letting the words wash over him and wondering how he’d gone a year without getting daily rants from Eddie.

What had he been doing with his free time, without needing to set aside hours of his day to rile Eddie up? What had Eddie been doing? What had any of them been doing?

He hopes everybody else actually has a life.

Ben and Mike hunch over a tourism brochure, debating where they should lead the group next, because god knows Richie doesn’t have any suggestions except a pizza place or his favourite bodega. Stan points out waterfowl flying through the sky to Bill. 

And Bev’s looking at Richie. 

He pushes his glasses up his nose. “See something you like?”

“You look tired,” she says.

“Probably New York germs,” Eddie butts in. “How could you move here? It’s disgusting!”

“Exactly why I picked it,” Richie grins. “I fit right in. And germs don’t make you _ tired _, dipshit.”

“They make you sick, which gives you bags under your eyes, which is what _ you _ have.”

“So do you.” And Eddie’s taller, too. Are you supposed to keep growing after high school? That doesn’t seem right. “Maybe you’re infected already.”

“Richie!” he shouts, pulling his shirt up over his mouth to protect himself.

“You’re scaring the birds away,” Stan complains.

Ben stuffs the brochure in his back pocket. “Guys, I missed this.”

Muffled through his shirt, Eddie asks, “You missed me yelling at Richie?”

“You a masochist now?” Stan asks.

Richie sends him a withering look. “Don’t pretend you didn’t miss the show.”

But maybe he didn’t. His and Bill’s families both moved away before they graduated high school. It was just Richie, Eddie and Ben who graduated together. Bev and Mike had come to the ceremony, but it still felt like their future was already fraying at the edges without the whole group there.

Not that Richie had expressed his ennui to anyone, at any time. If he got that honest, he truly might puke.

Ben doesn’t have that problem, though.

“I missed _ us _, I missed the Losers together,” Ben explains, bearing more vulnerability in seven words than Richie would ever dare to share in a non-life-threatening circumstance. “You guys were my first friends, and I just… don’t wanna lose that.”

Bev slings an arm around his shoulders. “Aw, Ben. We’ll always have each other.”

Predictably, his cheeks turn pink. He valiantly continues, “I know everybody’s busy, but maybe we can keep in better touch this year.”

He says it so politely, as if someone’s gonna argue with him. 

Bill nods. “I d-d-don’t know where the time went. I blinked and freshman year was over.”

“That was all the drinking,” Richie says, based on life experience. “Gotta be careful with that, Bill.”

But besides the drinking (and the smoking), time really had zoomed by. He’d barely memorized where all his classes were before second semester started with new classes he had to find.

And he didn’t even have a phone in his dorm room. His options were one of the pay phones in the hallway or sending a letter. Richie doesn’t _ write _. Or have conversations appropriate for public eavesdropping.

Bill shoots him an unimpressed look before turning back to the group. “We gotta stick together, no excuses.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees eagerly. 

“I’m not taking another blood oath,” Mike says, but he’s not arguing.

“No worries.” Ben reaches into his backpack and pulls out seven pieces of paper filled with neat script. “I’ve taken the liberty of compiling everybody’s phone numbers and school email addresses to make it easier.”

As he hands them out, Stan says, “What if I don’t want Tozier to have my number?”

Richie sticks Ben’s lovingly-crafted contact sheet down the front of his pants. “You’ll have to take it from me, dude.”

“Yeah, you wish.”

“That’s not sanitary,” Eddie says.

Richie puts his hands behind his head and starts gyrating. “Gonna be in student housing this year with my own phone. I’ll be regaling you fuckers nightly with tales of all the hot puss I’m getting.”

“If you get a papercut on your dick, I will not feel bad for you,” Bev says.

Mike laughs. “Man, Rich, for your sake, I hope you’ve gotten some by now.”

“Mikey my man, I am drowning in pussy—”

Eddie jabs an elbow in his ribs. “Would you quit moving your hips like that? There are children on this boat with horrified-looking parents.”

He stops. Then he wriggles his brows at him. “Or is it because you like it?”

He sticks a finger in his face. “I will push you into the ocean!”

“We’re actually in a bay right now,” Ben shares as a fun fact.

“I will put you on a dinghy, row you to the ocean, and push you into it!” Eddie threatens without looking away from Richie.

Richie winks. “Sounds romantic.”

“Oh thank fuck, we’re docking,” Stan breathes a sigh of relief.

They follow the bustle of the crowd off the deck and to the ramp back to land. The group is pulled apart a little in the exodus, and Richie and Eddie end up two elderly couples and an exhausted family behind the others. 

As they make their way down the ramp, Richie throws his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and drops his mouth to his ear. In an expression of honesty he can only share because Eddie won’t believe him, he says, “Hey, you know I missed you the most, right?”

Eddie scoffs. “Yeah right.”

Richie grins. “Come on, who couldn’t miss this _ face _?”

He reaches up to pinch his cheek, but Eddie slaps away. Richie tries again, and Eddie jumps back, so they get jostled closer to the ramp’s edge, their roughhousing not suited to staying in the centre of a crowd.

“Richie, quit it!” Eddie’s still slapping him.

“You can’t just have cheeks like that and not expect—”

“Hey dumb asses!” Bev’s voice is not that close, and Richie isn’t paying attention to her anyway. His full attention is devoted to pinching Eddie’s rosy red cheeks—

And suddenly they’re a tangle of wrestling limbs pinned to the straining chain railing. Richie’s feet lift off the ground as his centre of gravity flips. And he’s falling backward.

It’s a blur as he releases Eddie, smashes his glasses to his face, and drops into the water fifteen feet below.

This water isn’t meant to be swam in, which he knows instinctively by the taste of it.

He comes up kicking and spitting water, the brackish, dirty taste so different from the Derry quarry. 

“Richie!”

He shields his eyes from the sun with his hand and looks up at his friends leaning frantically against the railing he’d just fallen over.

“Jesus, Eddie,” Richie says. “I thought you were kidding!”

Eddie’s expression snaps from worried to annoyed. He flips Richie off.

For the rest of the day, Richie runs after Eddie, demanding a hug to his disgusting-water-covered body.

The first time they kissed was the winter before the shittiest summer of their lives.

The holidays had passed, so Richie was over the snow already. Biking on ice and slush was near impossible, so they were supposed to go sledding instead, but Eddie’s mom said it was too cold for him. Richie decided to go to his house instead because he didn’t fancy freezing his dick off. 

And, he hated to think it, but it had been weeks since Bill’s parents had heard from the police about Georgie, and it was one constant, massive bummer. Not to sound indelicate, but Richie didn’t have any better way to put the heartbreak of it all. Bill’s family still had their Christmas tree up, with Bill’s wrapped present for Georgie sitting underneath it with a nice bow. 

Richie, frankly, didn’t posses the emotional capacity to handle that, nor the filter to not accidentally make Bill feel worse on occasion. Which of course made Richie feel like shit, but he’d promised himself he’d help search the whole damn town for as long as Bill wanted once the snow melted.

In the meantime, he left Bill to Stan and headed to Eddie’s, whose emotional state he was more equipped to handle, because it didn’t involve a deader-by-the-day baby brother.

“You can get an infection through the cracks in your dry skin.”

They sat on the rug in Eddie’s room, playing cards splayed between them. Eddie had taken it upon himself to rub moisturizer into Richie’s hands, which were chapped and red from the bitter cold outside. 

“Not to mention hypothermia. Wear gloves, dumbass.”

Richie raised a brow over his glasses. “I’m gonna catch hypothermia through my hands?” 

Eddie’s hands were soft. And warm. If Richie got this treatment every time he forgot to wear gloves in the winter, he might never wear them again, just to piss Eddie off.

Eddie’s head was bowed over Richie’s hands, massaging a particularly dry knuckle with his thumb. He looked away long enough to glare up at him. “You lose the most heat from your hands, head and feet, Richie.”

“Really? I thought it was my dick, ‘cause your mom sure loves rubbing it.”

Eddie threw Richie’s hands back at him with a scowl. “Go fuck a sled.”

He laughed.

An hour later, it was determined that Eddie’s mom was asleep in front of the TV, so they snuck into the kitchen to boil some milk for hot chocolate. The insulation the snow provided made the house feel like it was all theirs, and the silence convinced them they were all alone.

Ice frosted the windows, and if Richie got too close the cold outside would infect him, too. So he crowded Eddie at the stove, even though Eddie kept shoving him away from the hot burner. It was warmer there.

They shushed each other at an increasing volume, ordering the other to be quiet, be careful, and choking back laughter while they waited for their milk to boil.

Back in Eddie’s room they were in their own world, hopped up on sugar as they built competing lego towers.

“Mine’s gonna be taller because I’m like three feet taller than you,” Richie was saying.

“One, you’re a liar,” Eddie said. “Two, I have a chair I can use to reach even higher than you.”

“A chair which you’ll never stand on in case you fall off and break your neck.”

“Don’t act like you know me, Trashmouth. I will stand on this chair.”

“Do it, then.”

“I don’t need it yet.”

Richie snorted. “Yeah, okay. Don’t know why you think I don’t know you, you never shut up.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk—incessantly, never-endingly.”

“So what do you know about me? Besides that I’m tall.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“How about something that’s not obvious?”

“I mean, I already said you were a liar.” Eddie poked a lego in his direction for emphasis. “Because you’re definitely not the fucking Casanova you keep claiming. You’ve never even kissed a girl.” 

He hadn’t.

“How would you know?”

“Because you’d’ve over-exaggerated and bragged about getting into some girl’s pants,” he said like he was the encyclopedia on all things Richie.

“I have said that!” Richie argued indignantly. “I’ve _ done _ that! You know I’m drowning in pussy—”

“Whose?”

“Huh?”

“Whose pussy are you drowning in, huh? It’s not any of the girls at school.”

Because of the graffiti in the girl’s bathroom about him— because everybody believed its message, which was why it got written there in the first place.

(Kids at school threw the same insult at all of them. Richie was the only one who developed a defense complex over it.)

Richie came up blank for a second. “None of your business.”

Eddie threw his head back and laughed. “You’re gonna be the worst fucking kisser when somebody finally lets you near them.”

“I’m a good kisser!” Richie insisted with nothing to back him up.

“Prove it.” His head popped out from around his tower. “Find a—”

Richie grabbed his chin and yanked Eddie’s face closer, all the way to his lips. He smashed their mouths together, no clue of what to do despite his claims. 

The kiss didn’t last long, but it was solid. No question in what it was.

They pulled away with a _ smack _ of saliva.

To Richie, Eddies’ reaction was in slow motion. The way his dark eyes grew round. How his mouth pulled into a grimace and he cried, “Ew, Richie!” 

And Richie’s stomach shot out of his body. What had he done? His heart revved like he’d committed murder, and he might as well have. This was the end of his fucking life.

But what Eddie finished with was, “Brush your teeth! Are you trying to kill me?”

And then he rushed to the bathroom across the hall. 

Richie waited, pulse in his throat, for Eddie to continue with a rant about how everybody was right about him, and there was something wrong with Richie, and demand that he leave his house.

But all he heard was the frantic _ swooshing _ of brushing.

Richie followed him to the bathroom in a daze. That was his first kiss.

Eddie jabbed a spare—_ Richie’s _ spare, for sleepovers—in his direction.

He looked down at it, then back at Eddie. His exasperation level seemed about the same as when Richie stuck his smelly feet in his face. Maybe it was fine. Maybe this was okay.

“Clean your mouth!” Eddie garbled, white foam forming at the corners of his mouth.

“So you can try to one up me?” Richie replied before he could stop himself.

Eddie shot him a flat look in the mirror.

Richie didn’t have anything else to do other than brush his teeth, so he did. They watched each other do it, turning it into a competition—how they were supposed to win, Richie couldn’t say. That was never the important part.

Finally Eddie spat, and Richie jumped to join, their spit swirling down the drain together, except for the bit Richie maybe got on Eddie’s arm.

Eddie washed his hands up to his elbows. “Ugh, gross.”

He watched steam rise from the water. “You’re gonna have to moisturize again,” he said lazily.

Eddie glared at him. 

The moment stretched like taffy at the fall fair, and Richie was being pulled along with it, unable to form as a solid shape until Eddie decided on a reaction.

What he decided, was to grab Richie’s face with dripping hands. For a fleeting second, Richie thought he was gonna head butt him. Instead, Eddie fitted his lips against Richie’s so gently that it startled him. 

To describe what Richie did and what Eddie did both a kiss was simply incorrect. One was a crash, the other was an experience.

Richie was able to map Eddie’s lips to his memories this time; soft and warm and mint-flavoured. Their mouths moved against each other’s slowly, with infinite patience. There was a fluttering in Richie’s throat, and a tingling spreading through his body. He thought this may be what being drunk felt like. 

(Later in life, he would be disappointed that alcohol did not recreate the euphoria that kidding Eddie Kaspbrak did.)

“That’s how you kiss, moron,” Eddie said when he pulled back, a full red blush coating his cheeks. _ “You _ nearly knocked out my fucking tooth.”

“Whuh—” Richie gaped. “Where’d you—why are you so good at that?”

“I read,” he shrugged.

“You read what? _ Playboy _ doesn’t have kissing tips, I’ve checked. Do you read your mom’s porno books?”

“They’re not porno books, they’re erotic novels.”

“Did you read your mom’s erotic novels?”

Noise sounded from downstairs, a gut-punching reminder that they weren’t all alone in the house.

“Be quiet!” Eddie dragged Richie back to his room and carefully shut the door.

Richie’s fingers twitched at his side. He wanted to do it again. He knew with a dread he’d carried his whole life he shouldn’t.

“Let’s make a bridge.” Eddie waved at their forgotten lego towers.

Richie gave himself a shake. 

He could still taste mint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fic in this fandom, so please let me know what you think!! If I get enough of a response, I might post the second chapter tomorrow instead of next week!  
You can find me on [tumblr](http://katranga.tumblr.com) if you want.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! I probably actually would've gotten this chapter out sooner, but my computer decided to delete the epilogue I'd just finished writing, so I spent the week frantically re-writing that while it was still fresh instead of cleaning this up. But whatever, no use crying over lost files, I guess.  
Also jsyk, I made a one-time change to the summary after posting this chapter.  
Anyway, this is a bit of a longer chapter, pleeeease let me know what you think!  
Warnings for mentions of substance abuse, panic attacks.

It’s two weeks into second year, and Richie’s yet to call any of the losers, despite their promises to Bill. He’s fallen, basically immediately, into the same shit as last year. 

Heady off freedom, he drank, probably too much, but it’s college, right? Everyone drinks. Everyone smokes weed. And he was alone, away from his parents, and his friend’s parents, and his friends. But at least there aren’t really bullies in college—everybody has something better to do than pick on the same handful of losers. 

So he was having a good time as a freshman in college. Every day away from Derry was another day closer to a night free from nightmares that wrenched him awake. Closer to not needing a night light—try explaining to your mom why at thirteen you’re suddenly afraid of the dark. Then try again explaining that to your college roommates. Try explaining why you won’t step foot into a McDonald’s in case their mascot is hanging around. Try wanting to move forward and upward, so far away, but knowing that each moment away is another day closer to the threat of _ twenty seven years later _.

Drinking doesn’t really stop him with dreading the future (not with the family-granted risk of addiction haunting him with every sip and pull) and especially not after getting held up at knife point walking home drunk from a party last year.

He’d laughed, he laughed so hard at the attempted robber, because as _ if _ Richie had any money, and as _ if _ he’d be so scared of this fucker in a ski mask that he’d fork over the bus pass and Subway loyalty punch card in his wallet.

Now if the robber had a curly wig and a big red nose…

So, whatever. He did _ try _. To drink less. But then he smoked more. Tried to smoke less. Drank more.

But tonight Richie makes the conscious decision not to drink _ or _ get high on a Tuesday simply because he’s lonely. Bill warned him about time slipping, after all. (No he hadn’t. But it’s easier to help himself if it’s someone else’s idea.)

He grabs the cordless phone and heads to his room instead. It’s a shared house phone, but even between three other roommates, it’s usually free. 

He calls Bill to brag about being sober on the most ungodly of days. He doesn’t answer.

“Dick,” Richie mutters. 

He sticks a cigarette between his lips as he flips through the papers on his desk looking for Ben’s number, and wishes Eddie hadn’t pushed him overboard so he still had a friend contact sheet. 

Which prompts him to call Eddie, the only other number he knows. He has all the losers’ _ home _ phone numbers memorized, but that doesn’t help him unless he wants to prank call their parents. 

Eddie answers. “Eddie Kaspbrak speaking.”

“Nerd,” Richie snorts. He lights the cigarette, which is getting soggy, because he forgot it was in his mouth.

“Kind of a lame prank call.”

“If you hadn’t answered, I was gonna call your mom and go all heavy breather on her.”

“She’s called the cops for less,” Eddie warns.

“What’s she gonna do? I’m in a different state.”

“Yeah, state of delusion.”

Richie drags his desk chair in front of the open window and blows smoke into the night. It’s shitty student housing, but it’s an actual house, so though it’s falling apart, it’s good enough for him and the NY dirt bags he’s rooming with. It’s the same guys he got stuck with in dorms last year, so it was easier to find a place with people he already knew rather than risk it with strangers when he moved off campus.

“Are you smoking?” Eddie asks. Richie can picture his nose wrinkling.

“Just a cigarette.”

“Well I’d certainly hope you weren’t getting high on a school night.”

Richie laughs. He doesn’t know what’s funnier—that Eddie said “school night” exactly like his mom, or that this time _ last _ night, Richie was blitzed from his roommate’s bong.

“Oh, Eddie, the differences in our college experiences could fill a book.”

“So? Not like you’d read it,” he snaps. He sounds more pissed off than he really needs to be.

“I touch a nerve? Are you writing us a book?”

“What? No. Are you sure you’re not high?”

“Unless I’m still high from yesterday.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Violent childhood trauma.”

Eddie sighs, but he’s lost his edge when he says, “That can’t be your answer every time.”

Richie hums, taking a long drag as he searches the sky for a better answer. The moon is huge tonight. “What do you do?”

“Huh?”

The distance provided by the phone gives Richie more courage than he’d have than if they were in person. “When everything feels like shit? Like it all… you don’t smoke, or drink much. How do you deal?”

There’s a pause. Richie still thinks it’s a perfectly fair question.

“I have panic attacks, Richie,” Eddie says flatly.

Oh right.

“How are those?” Richie asks.

“How _ are _ they?”

“Yeah. Maybe I should try them.”

“You’re a fucking idiot. Didn’t you—you had one when you got locked in a porta potty in tenth grade. Was that a fun time?”

It reminded him so much of the fucking sewers. He thought he was gonna die.

“Was that what that was?” he asks blandly. “Thought I was just being a pussy.”

“Is there a reason you called me?” Eddie asks shortly.

“Yeah, what’re everyone’s numbers? A very rude little boy shoved me in the New York bay and ruined a cherished paper with all my friend’s names on it.”

He hangs up.

“Bastard.” Richie stubs the cigarette butt out on the windowsill. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

The phone rings in his lap. 

He contemplates just letting it ring, but that seems boring.

“Pinky’s Porno Palace, what’s your pleasure?” Richie answers.

“You make it so hard to be friends with you.” Without pausing, Eddie continues, “I’ll email you the phone numbers tomorrow.”

“But I have to go to the library to see my email,” Richie whines.

“So go to the library,” he says like it’s a ludicrous complaint. “And go to your classes, and do your homework, and join some clubs. Get a job. It’s college, Richie. You should be way too busy to laze around getting high all the time.”

Which is a hell of a lot more judgement than he’d been wanting from this call, and exactly why he tried to reach Bill first.

“Fuck off, did I accidentally call my dad?”

“It’s called getting a life. So you can stop thinking about your old one.”

Richie’s about to give an even snarkier response when Eddie’s words sink in. It’s not a bad idea—he’s been distracting himself with booze and parties, but he could be focusing on classes instead. Might as well give it a try, he’s here anyway.

“I gotta study,” Eddie says after a minute. “And I’m sure you need to read a script, or suck Shakespeare’s ghost dick, or whatever the fuck getting a drama degree entails.”

“Wow, you really think ghost Shakespeare would go for me?”

He can hear the smile he’s biting back. “Goodnight, Trashmouth.”

“Sweet dreams, Spaghetti.”

When Richie left Derry for good, it was just him and Eddie and Mike saying goodbye, because Bill and Stan’s families had moved long ago, and Ben and Bev left the whole state in the rear view as soon as they graduated.

Richie had a job at the ice cream shop in town that was minimum effort for maximum payoff, so he’d decided to tough it out through the summer until the bitter end. Besides, Eddie wasn’t leaving until two days before school started—that was the agreement he’d made with his mom so she wouldn’t bitch at him every second of his last summer in Derry. And Mike was never leaving.

Whenever another loser set out on their own, Richie was shocked all over again that any of them were allowed to leave. They’d defeated clowns and bullies and choking parental influences, but actually escaping? That was the carrot he’d been dangling in front of himself as long as he could remember.

Like, even without the murder clown’s influence, Derry would still be an evil fucking place. Bowers tried to gut Ben like a fish for fun. Kids dumped trash on Bev at school and got away with it. Mike and Stan dealt with systemic prejudices that you couldn’t conveniently push down a well because it was basically ingrained in the town’s DNA. Traumatic killer clown attack or not, they were all safer away from there. (Which made Richie worry about Mike.)

And yet, there was still a nagging insistence deep within Richie telling him that this—hugging Eddie and Mike the night before he said goodbye to this hellhole forever—was as good as it was ever gonna get.

Because his friends were still within reach. And he didn’t know who he was gonna be without them.

The next day Richie gets to class on time and sober. With all his faculties intact, the classroom looks different. Brighter. It’s got a mirror across the far wall and a slick wood floor, so its main function seems to be for dance, but he doesn’t have a dance course this semester. He wracks his brain trying to remember which of his courses he’s actually arrived for.

Clara, his roommate’s girlfriend, looks at him with mild surprise. “Richie. I thought you’d dropped this class.”

She’d been calling Richie out for his shit last year already. She’d pulled him aside near the end of their first semester and asked, “Do you have _ friends _?”

“What?” At the time, it’d been at least a month since he talked to any of the losers. “Yeah, what the hell?”

“Okay, because you’re reminding me of my twelve year old brother when we moved halfway through a school year.”

“Huh?”

“You’re acting like you’ve never had a real friend in your fucking life and have no clue how to make one. Nobody cares if you’ve fucked before, Richie. This is the theatre department. You can’t throw a cat without hitting a virgin. You’ll make friends when you start focusing on the work.” And then she’d smacked him on the head with her script, like a dog and a newspaper.

Of course, he hadn’t taken her advice to heart. It took him a while to notice tat no one in his classes wanted to deal with him. Turns out a class clown in college? Not a welcome distraction, just a nuisance. 

It still took Eddie nagging at him for Richie to actually care.

“Of course not,” Richie replies to Clara. “I love… whatever class this is. I even memorized the lines!”

Which he can say confidently whichever class this ends up being, because he’d memorized all the scenes for his three classes that required it. 

The professor sweeps in behind them, and cries theatrically, “But did you memorize the _ emotion _?”

Richie rolls his eyes. Fuck, it’s his acting foundations class. He can’t handle this one sober. The professor’s a prick.

“Please, young man, impress us with your mastery of prose and presentation,” the professor urges. 

When Richie just stares at him, the professor waves him to the front of the room.

“Seriously?” he mutters.

Clara shoots him a look he’s been on the receiving end of his whole life. She’s clearly given it her best shot at trying to understand his intentions, but has come up confusingly blank at an explanation. There’s plenty of times he’d give _ himself _ that look if he could.

“It’s presentation day,” Clara says. “Isn’t that why you memorized the monologue?”

Oh shit, the monologue? Easily the most drawn-out and… vulnerable of the scripts he’d read last night. This is gonna suck.

Fuck Eddie and his stupid advice.

Richie drags his feet to the front of the room and the professor nods at him to go.

He gets two lines in when the professor starts tutting. “You’ve committed it to your mind, but not your _ heart _.” Richie hopes that means he gets to sit back down. But the professor says, “From the top, with feeling!”

Richie tries again, holding onto certain words and pausing dramatically to attempt to add _ feeling _, but the professor stops him again, which seems rude. Can’t he just give Richie a bad grade and be done with it? 

“Stop, stop—what’s your name?”

Clara snorts, but Richie finds it hard to be offended when the professor’s name is nowhere in his head.

“Richie,” he says.

“Richard.” The professor leans forward. “Richard, this piece of drama is about longing and loss, a future that could never be. The tragedy of a desire never realized must be shown respect in the way you share it, and you are doing it a disservice by just reading the lines as they are on paper.”

Richie shrugs. “So can I sit down?”

The guy looks fucking flabbergasted. “You will stay there and repeat this piece as many times as it takes for you to find its truth.”

His classmates groan.

Richie fidgets with his glasses. “Are you serious, man?”

He spreads his arms. “Am I not here to teach you the dramatic arts? How would sitting down help you? Richard, tap into your own soul. Ruminate on a future you lost, a piece of yourself or someone else that you’ll never get back. Infuse your delivery with your own senses.”

So this dude wants Richie to torture himself.

“Dude, if you want me to spill my guts, I’d rather use a knife.”

Clara rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“It’s a drama class!” Richie says. 

“Can he please present at the end?” one of his other classmates addresses the professor. It’s Bryant, the stereotype of theatre nerd, right down to his homosexuality. He side-eyes Richie. “_ Some _ of us have worked hard on our performances.”

After a minute of pompous deliberation, the professor agrees, but sends Richie to the corner so he’ll have a quiet place to think about what emotions he wants to bring to life.

Which is a mortifying way of putting a twenty-something in time-out.

Richie slides to the floor in the corner, wondering if smoking could get him kicked out. He didn’t come to class to get dunked on.

The professor interrupts a few other students, which makes him feel a little less like a dumb fuck. He doesn’t make anybody else sit in the corner, though.

Richie’s acted stupid all his life, but he’s always understood the material. And he _ knows _ the lines. It’s not enough. He’s gonna have to kill this monologue to recover. And for the professor to let him leave this damn classroom.

Richie thunks his head against the wall.

He’s supposed to think about a future he never had. That fucking clown gave him lots of futures. One where he was missing, one where he was dead. And how about the mystical, unknowable future where him and his friends weren’t fucked up beyond repair? With panic attacks and guilt complexes and self-destructive coping mechanisms?

He rubs at the indents his glasses leave on his nose. He tries to shove the memories down, but it’s all bubbling to the surface now.

The tragedy of a desire never realized.

He thinks of Eddie’s smile, and the way it used to brighten Richie’s day. He missed it, and Eddie’s laugh, and him challenging Richie at every turn. He doesn’t get to experience Eddie anymore, but he still has the impression of Eddie’s lips on his, the tentative softness enough to make his heart skip a beat. 

A memory is all it’ll ever be now, because they didn’t know what they were doing back then, and Richie still can’t comprehend the meaning of it all, and Eddie’s miles away anyway. 

They’d only keep growing apart, just like the rest of the losers. Bill’s words were nice, but Richie, at least, hadn’t gotten a call since school started. Everybody would keep in touch with Bill. And Bev. And Ben, maybe. Not Richie. 

“Richard,” the professor’s voice snaps him out of his reverie. “I hope you’ve used your introspection wisely.”

Richie nods. He’s in the back corner, so everyone has to crane their necks to see him. He doesn’t move.

Knees at his chest, Richie gives the monologue. It’s bittersweet, so he cycles through memories that get him into the appropriate head space.

He thinks about something good—riding bikes through town with Bill, Stan and Eddie. Something horrific; Stan thinking they abandoned him when he almost got his head bitten off in the sewers. Something achingly unfair; they’re never gonna see each other as much as they did when they were kids. And repeat. Good; minty kisses. Horrific; Eddie’s screams echoing Niebolt when the clown came for him. Unfair; even without that summer, Richie never would’ve had an idyllic childhood. If the clown hadn’t scared him into stopping kissing Eddie, they’d have gotten caught and stoned to death.

And then Richie’s just breathing, because he’s finished his lines but Richie’s still _ there _. In his feelings.

He turns from the speck in the flooring he’s been staring at to the prof. “Will you get off my dick now?”

He was halfway through saying “Bravo!” when Richie decided to speak. He grimaces. “An actor’s emotions can be volatile, Richard, but respect is the foundation on which…”

Richie walks out. 

He stops outside the building to pull out a cigarette. Anything to calm this feeling in his chest—his heart isn’t racing, but on the verge of bursting; caught in limbo right before the explosion.

He takes a drag. He tries to convince himself he looks cool and brooding—he used that as an excuse once when Eddie asked why he smokes; Eddie nearly killed himself laughing and said he’d need to ditch the grandma glasses and Hawaiian shirts before that ever happened. He hadn’t, so he doesn’t. Just another a loser destroying his lung capacity.

“I’m impressed.” It’s Bryant, from class. He’s thin, and pale, and growing out of a baby face painfully slowly. He walks like he wants the attention he gets—posture stick-straight, hips swinging, chin held high. If he ever set foot in Derry, he’d have rocks tied to him before getting pushed off the kissing bridge.

“You sound shocked,” Richie says.

“Well I was trying to be coy about it, but colour me shocked again, you’re too smart for that.”

Richie blows smoke out the side of his mouth. “You double-majoring in backhanded compliments?”

“I just wanted to say keep up the good work. We’ve shared a few classes, and that was the first time I’ve seen you take yourself seriously.”

“It was bullshit,” Richie grumbles.

“I’m sorry?”

“_ Relieve a past trauma for me, Richard _,” he takes on the professor’s affectation to mock him. “I did it fine the first time.”

Bryant puts his hand on his hip. “You’re studying drama, aren’t you? You don’t intend to hone your craft?”

“I just wanna tell jokes.”

“Then take an improv class. Because I promise you _ that _ class,” he points at the building they’d just left, “is getting tired of your jokes.”

Then he strides off, calm as anything. 

Richie crushes the cigarette butt under his heel. He uses the first pay phone he finds to call Eddie, who doesn’t answer. Why would he be at his dorm in the middle of the day? Stupid.

He goes to the library for Eddie’s email and scribbles everybody’s numbers into his notebook. 

He sends Eddie a rude email back, and when he doesn’t respond in five minutes, finds another pay phone.

He calls Mike. He might be home.

“Hanlon residence.”

“Hey Mike.”

“Richie.” There’s a smile to his voice that almost breaks Richie. “You’re lucky you caught me, I just came inside for lunch.”

“Oh? Don’t mean to bother you.”

“Since when?”

They laugh.

“How’re you doing?” Richie asks the only loser who didn’t make it out. He has the vague inclination to throw him a life preserver and drag Mike bodily out of that town, but he doesn’t know what that would work.

“Same old, same old. What about you? Got a break between classes?”

He’s actually going to be late for his theatre history class—in an actual classroom, with desks and books and everything. It’s a bore.

“Yeah,” he says. “And I just. I don’t know.” 

He’s feeling too big for his body. Or too small. Or something. He’s not feeling right, and he doesn’t know how to click himself back into a place where he feels okay.

Eddie’s suggestion was shit; class was a terrible distraction compared to drugs and alcohol.

“Missed me?” Mike offers a joke to the end of Richie’s sentence.

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s very sweet, Richie.” There’s a pause. “Are you okay, though? Really?”

Richie exhales. He’s not, he’s really, really not, but what’s Mike gonna do? “Yeah, I’m good. How’re the cows doing?”

And Mike launches into a wholesome farm story that resets Richie’s heart rate to a manageable pace.

They hang up soon after and Richie slinks into his history theatre class late. He takes a bunch of notes that are mostly legible.

He hasn’t thought about kissing Eddie in _ years _.

They weren’t alone together again for a while after first time they kissed, which was entirely purposeful on Richie’s end. They still stuck together like glue at school, and hung out with Bill and Stan, but if their other friends wouldn’t be around, Richie didn’t call on Eddie to hang out. Which was harder than he expected it to be when he made that resolution to himself. 

But what was he supposed to do? Tempt fate—and himself—by putting himself alone in a room with Eddie again? Richie could barely look at him without his throat doing this weird hiccuping thing, cutting off his words and making his voice crack.

It only lasted a month, though. Some work was getting done on Eddie’s house, and his mom didn’t want him inhaling the fumes or dust or whatever, so Richie’s mom offered to have him over. For a sleep over. 

“Are you two too old to still sleep in the same bed?” his mom asked the morning she broke the news. She was reading a newspaper and filling the coffee machine with water at the same time.

Richie choked on his cereal. Fighting down a blush, he said, “Yeah, I think the firm cut off point for that is when we started growing pubes, mom.”

“Don’t be crass,” she muttered without looking at him. She spilled water on her newspaper. “Ah, fuck a duck.”

“Don’t be crass,” Richie mocked.

She glared at him and said flatly, “Congratulations on your pubes, Richie. Go get ready for school.”

On the walk home from school together, Richie bounced all over the snowy sidewalk like he was excited—which he _ was _; Eddie’s mom rarely released Eddie for the night—but he was also kind of nauseous. 

He couldn’t decide what he was dreading more; that last time would come up in conversation, or that it wouldn’t.

Luckily he was distracted from spiralling most of the afternoon.

The blow-up air mattress situation took hours. First they had to find a dust mask so Eddie could help Richie search the grimy, freezing, bug-filled garage (Eddie’s words) to find the damn thing. Then they had to clean it to Eddie’s specifications, and venture back into the garage to find the pump to blow it up.

Then they took turns pumping, but it wasn’t holding air, so they launched an investigation to determine if it was the pump, or a hole, or if they were just doing it wrong. 

The entire process was prolonged by bickering and hand washing and spontaneous wrestling, naturally.

By the time they got enough tape over the microscopic hole in the plastic for it to hold air, it was dinner time.

So Richie didn’t have the mental capacity to worry about Eddie sleeping in his room until after they snuck into the kitchen for ice cream. 

It was night by then, dark outside the windows, and the living room TV his parents were nodding off to provided white noise in the background. Circumstances tricking them into believing they were all alone again, with no distractions except the ice cream on the table between them.

Eddie ate in small bites so his digestive tract didn’t get overwhelmed by too much cold or whatever. Richie was turning his ice cream into soup.

“And then—“ Eddie was explaining the latest super bug he’d read about in some dumb magazine like _ Hypochondriac Monthly. _ Richie didn’t know why tortured himself like that. “It takes over your esophagus, burning you from the inside, sloughing off your skin…”

He continued, stabbing into his ice cream for emphasis, and then happily scooping it into his mouth.

Richie ate his own ice cream with the knowledge that Eddie’s lips would taste the same as his right about now.

Eddie frowned at him. “Are you falling asleep? You haven’t asked if the dick falls off yet.”

“Does the dick fall off?”

“The article didn’t mention any genitalia.”

“So you just wanted me to start talking about dick for no reason?”

“I need to know you’re paying attention, Richie. What if this happens to you?”

“Then I’ll have you to save me, won’t I?”

“No, you’ll die.”

“Well at least my dick won’t fall off.”

They stood at the bathroom sink brushing their teeth. Richie’s mom had clearly been through with a broom while he was at school, to try to meet Eddie’s standards, but all it did was sweep dusty hair balls into the corner. Eddie kept his stuff spread solely on the hand towel from his overnight bag.

Every time Richie’s gaze skipped to the mirror in front of them, his chest clenched. Maybe Eddie had forgotten about last time, so his chest wasn’t doing anything of the sort. And his skin didn’t spark every time their elbows brushed. The mint on his tongue didn’t kick-start his adrenaline.

Richie spat in the sink. 

Eddie was still going. Clockwise, counter-clockwise, up and down. He was gonna floss, too, this fucking dude.

Richie leaned against the counter with a groan. “We’re never gonna get out of here at this rate, come on.”

Eddie slid him his bottle of mouthwash. “You should really start taking care of your oral health.”

A joke about “oral” was half-formed in his brain when he tossed back the mouthwash like a shot. The spearmint burned, unexpectedly strong, and a drop of it slipped down his throat. 

Between one moment and the next, the sink, mirror, and Eddie were splattered with mouthwash he’d hacked up.

“Richie!” Eddie screeched. “You can’t just spit on everything—”

“I don’t spit on _ everything _—”

“It’s everywhere!”

“Mouthwash is antibacterial—”

“Not when it’s infected with your spit!”

The tired voice of his mom called from down the hall, “Boys. Play nice.”

Suffice to say, it took another twenty minutes to get out of the bathroom.

Then they had to argue about who got the bed and who got the air mattress. Richie’s mom had laid out freshly washed sheets for both.

Every last thing was a production for the two boys, which drained the energy from anybody around them, but it only invigorated themselves. Like a perpetual motion machine, or a ping pong game; an endless back and forth ramping up to a resolution just out of Richie’s grasp.

“Hey, how about whoever kisses better gets the bed?” 

Richie didn’t remember deciding to voice the suggestion, but it was definitely him who said it.

Eddie blinked at him. “So _ I _ get the bed.”

“What? No.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I kissed better last time.”

“Says who?”

“You almost knocked my teeth out! And you tasted like hot dogs.”

“_ Pretty _ sure I tasted like hot chocolate, you liar.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and sat down cross-legged on the bed. “Whatever, our teeth are already brushed. We’ll just do it again.”

Oh. So that turned out exactly how Richie wanted it to. Not that he’d ever admit it.

He jumped onto bed, which was the only way he got onto any piece of furniture—flinging himself onto it to expend as much energy as possible. 

He tucked his legs under himself in front of Eddie. “Well, I’ll beat you this time.”

“How, you been practicing?”

“Yeah.”

“On what, your hand?”

“No! How’d you get so good? _ Your _ hand?”

It certainly wasn’t _ reading _, which Richie called bullshit on. Richie had snuck into his parent’s room to read one of his own mother’s quote-unquote erotic novels, and it was all heaving bosoms and throbbing manhoods and raw sexual passion, zero of which had anything to do with their current kissing situation.

Like, did Richie get off to it? Sure, but he didn’t unlock the secrets of kissing well.

Eddie poked the air in front of his face triumphantly. “So you admit I was good?”

Richie was caught off guard for only a second. Then he cupped Eddie’s face and surged forward. 

At the last moment he remembered Eddie’s slow approach last time, and he paused. 

“What?” Eddie’s breath washed over Richie’s cheeks.

He had to cross his eyes to look at Eddie that close. “Not as good as me.”

He inched forward until their lips met—_ gently _, he reminded himself. No need for a frenzied pounce like his first try.

They kissed, and Richie got the same whip-quick heart palpitations that were so at odds with the tenderness of their movement. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was supposed to be doing this with a girl. But girls didn’t want anything to do with him. And Eddie was right here, and his best friend, and Richie would rather be kissing Eddie than any girl in their class anyway.

But that was all tucked _ waaay _ back in his subconscious. Richie was much more focused on savouring the way Eddie’s lips felt against his. 

They parted for a moment, and Eddie plucked off Richie’s glasses, which were fogging up, and went back in. That did make head movement a lot easier. Maybe Eddie _ was _ a better kisser than him.

Again, not that he’d ever admit it.

When Richie had to stop to take a breath, his lips tingled. “So I think I won that one.”

Eddie shook his head. Despite Richie’s lack of glasses, he didn’t miss how red his cheeks were. “Says who?”

“Me.” 

“Are you trying to rig this? Just sleep on the air mattress for one night.”

Richie shoved his glasses back on. “_ You _ sleep on the air mattress.”

“But I won!” Eddie grabbed a pillow and smacked him with it.

Richie wrenched the pillow from his hand, and from there they grappled until they both fell off his bed onto the air mattress, popping their carefully placed tape off the hole.

Air streamed out in a wheeze.

They were still wrestling when the door flew open and Richie’s mom stuck her head in. “Richie, if that boy goes home with one scratch on him, I’ll never hear the end of it from Mrs. Kaspbrak. Get _ off _ him!”

Richie let Eddie go and sat back on his haunches. They both slowly sunk toward the floor on the deflating air mattress.

His dad’s voice came from down the hall, “How many friends has he got over?”

His mom leaned her head past the door. “Just one. I know, it’s an awful lot of noise…” 

While she was distracted, Richie leaned over and planted another kiss on Eddie. His eyes bugged out of his head, and he had a hand lifted to smack him, but Richie’s mom turned back to them.

Eddie’s hand slammed back to his side

“…for just two boys.” She narrowed her eyes at them. “Richie, I know you’re offering your bed to your guest tonight.”

“Why would you know that?” Richie asked.

“Because I’m telling you to right now. Now both of you, go to sleep.”

As soon as she closed the door, Eddie took advantage of the lack of parental supervision to sock Richie in the shoulder.

“What the fuck was that?” 

Richie shrugged, pretending the punch didn’t hurt. “I won. I get the bed.”

“The competition was _ quality _, not quantity, asshole. You doing it more doesn’t mean anything. And your mom just told you to give me your bed!”

“What, you gonna rat me out?”

Eddie’s mouth set in a determined line. “Come here.”

Suspicious but nevertheless intrigued, Richie leaned toward him. 

Eddie wound his fingers through Richie’s loose curls… and then yanked his head toward the floor and clambered over him to the bed.

“Fuck you!” Richie tried to crawl back up, but Eddie kept kicking at him. Richie grabbed his ankle, and Eddie smacked his glasses off. “Son of a bitch,” Richie huffed.

He patted around on the carpet for his glasses, and by the time they were back on his face, Eddie was all tucked in, hands under his cheek like he was actually asleep. Dick.

Despite what he’d claimed with his mom this morning, Richie resigned himself to a compromise. He crawled over Eddie to the empty spot on the bed against the wall, where Eddie always made him sleep.

Richie stretched out and laid on his side next to Eddie. He was still so little that Richie had plenty of room.

“Don’t hog the blankets,” Eddie said.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Richie grumbled.

His eyes stayed closed, but his mouth twitched with a smile.

Richie calls Eddie at the end of the day.

“Well that was stupid.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” Eddie says.

“The prof told me to look inward to connect to the character and I almost had a panic attack in the middle of class.”

“Are you—” He stops. “Okay.” It doesn’t sound like a question, so Richie doesn’t answer. After a moment, Eddie says, “Why do I get the impression you’re blaming me?” 

“You told me to make an effort!”

“Then do it differently,” he yawns.

“Were you sleeping? It’s barely eleven.”

“Exactly, so yes, I was sleeping. And isn’t the whole point of acting not being yourself? Why are you looking inward?” Fabric brushing the receiver crackles through the phone line. He mumbles, “My advice was good. Not my fault you go to a bad school.”

“This is a good school.”

“Then keep going to your classes. Maybe you’ll learn something.” 

Soft breathing fills his ear. Richie closes his eyes, and it’s like he’s right there with Eddie. He probably shouldn’t be fantasizing about being in bed with Eddie like when they were twelve, but. It’s been a bad day, and Eddie is a comfort.

“Is there anything else?” Eddie mumbles.

Richie clears his throat roughly. “No, I guess that’s it.”

“Get some rest. Lack of sleep puts you at risk for all sorts of diseases.” 

And then he’s gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! More exciting things happen in the next few chapters, so I decided to polish this off quick so we can get to the rest of the stuff faster.  
Please enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Richie flips through textbooks from last year that he didn’t absorb any information from the first time around. He’d had a whole class on acting theory, so constantly re-traumatizing himself by digging into bad memories couldn’t possible be the only way to “hone his craft”. That prof was a fucking hack.

He starts actually making an effort, because that’s why he chose acting, right? To pretend to be somebody else. 

Getting lost in another person’s life helps him make it through his own. He sees it as slipping into a character’s sadness like a used army jacket at a thrift store, then taking it off a minute later because it smells like rust and sweat. Trying on an ugly hat that a man of means would wear to give a pretentious speech, and throwing it away once it’s done.

He does his homework, which takes up not an insignificant amount of time—no wonder he’d only been doing half of it. And Clara starts looking at him as more than just something to roll her eyes at, and chooses him for partner scenes. Which is mostly an unwelcome side-effect, but at least someone wants to work with him.

Eddie calls a few times, and they argue and joke and argue some more. Richie gives a few other losers a call, too, and they actually answer.

He relegates smoking to the weekend, and drinks just beer during the week. His sleep is getting worse, but you can’t have everything.

It’s hard, being a semi-responsible adult, but he’s  _ trying _ .

Richie’s three weeks into actually giving a shit, and he’s rewarding himself by playing video games with his roommates.

The phone rings and Jordan answers. He’s an acne-covered jackass, but he’s ripped, which is the only reason him having a girlfriend makes sense. “Pizza Slut, how can we please you today?” 

Richie snorts without looking away from the TV. “You opening your legs to a telemarketer, dude?”

“It’s for you,” Jordan says. “Hope you been practicing your dick-slurping sounds.”

Richie laughs and tosses the controller to his other roommate as he loses the game. “Yeah, been learning a lot from your girlfriend.”

He snatches the phone from Jordan and ducks away from his attempted smack, answering the phone with, “Somebody need pussy-eating lessons?”

A shuddering gasp answers him, and his knees go weak. Richie is catapulted back to the summer of his nightmares—Eddie in Niebolt, with the clown, and a broken arm and him  _ screaming _ not to fucking touch him, because they’d all almost been killed.

“Eddie?” Richie charges to his room and slams the door. “Eddie, are you okay?”

“Richie, hi,” Eddie says like he’s trying to smile through whatever’s making him sound shattered. “What’s up?”

“What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.”

“ _ Dude. _ ”

“What?” he snaps through a hiccup. An impressive feat. “You called me asking about panic attacks and I didn’t say shit. Do me the same favour.”

“I didn’t answer the phone crying like I saw a leper.”

Richie probably could’ve taken a gentler approach, but he didn’t, so they ramp up real quick this time. 

“Hey, fuck you!” Eddie’s shout crackles through the receiver.

“Fuck off, you can’t call a guy crying and expect him not to be worried!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“You were yelling first!”

“Ugh, fuck you,” Eddie says again. At least he’s not wheezing anymore. “I should’ve called Ben.”

“Then call Ben. Give him a heart attack and yell at him for it.”

“Ugh!”

And the line disconnects. 

Richie whips his phone at his bed. 

Almost immediately he decides that no, the fucker doesn’t get off that easily. He dials Eddie right back and gets a busy signal. He ends the call. Calls again. Busy. Does it again and again. Then he waits an excruciating full minute. 

The phone rings in his hand.

“Eddie—”

“You’re so impatient—”

“ _ You _ hung up—”

“—just let me call, it’s not hard—”

“—like I’m gonna wait for your ass—”

“—I hang up, you wait for me to call back,” Eddie says exasperatedly. “That’s how it’s always been!”

“Only so your mom wouldn’t get annoyed by the phone ringing off the damn hook. That doesn’t apply anymore.”

He huffs.

Richie waits.

“I hate Derry,” Eddie finally says.

“You’re not in Derry.” Fear tightens his throat, and he almost asks, ‘Are you?’ but he’d just called Eddie’s college number. He’s safe.

“No, shut up, I’m still talking.” Richie smiles despite himself and sits on his bed. Eddie continues, “I hate Derry, but at least… at least I had you guys, you know? There was always someone to hang out with. Now I just—” He sighs. “I dunno. It’s hard.”

Richie’s caught off guard by the defeat in his voice. Softly, he says, “You not making friends, Eds?”

“Obviously  _ not _ ,” he snaps at him again, and from anyone else it would piss Richie off, but from Eddie it’s endearing. “I just, I don’t fit in here. I’m a loser—”

“And you’ll always be a Loser, capital ‘L’,” Richie interrupts. “But I promise you there are plenty of boring losers over your way who’d be happy to hang out with you. You just gotta find them. Have you tried the library?”

“Yes, Richie, I’ve been to the library.”

Richie snorts. “Nerd.”

Eddie’s returning laugh brings a buzzing warmth to Richie’s chest. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish you were here.”

“I’ll come visit,” Richie decides on a whim. “Next weekend.”

“You’re just inviting yourself to my dorm room?”

“Yeah. Maybe we’ll annoy your roommate enough that they’ll move out.”

There’s a pause. “I didn’t get assigned a roommate this year.”

“Lucky you!” Before they left for college, Eddie had been so freaked out about sharing a room with a stranger. “You have an extra bed, or no?”

“Uh huh.”

“Perfect. So I’ll come to you, because trust me, if you hated how messy my room was at home, you don’t even wanna see a picture of this student house with three other guys.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Eddie says. “You don’t have to visit me, though.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Eddie’s quiet.

“Psych!” Richie says way too loud, because it was a mean joke he regretted immediately. “I’m coming whether you like it or not.”

“You say that to all your dates?”

“Suck my dick, dude.” He starts bouncing on his bed. “And start scouting campus parties. I’ll  _ get _ you some friends.” 

It’s a promise. It sounds like a threat.

Richie’s only got one morning class on Fridays, so he’s en route to Eddie’s by noon. 

It’s not a  _ tortuously _ long train ride, unless you’re Richie, who can’t sit still longer than five minutes without needing some form of entertainment. Reading in motion makes him sick, so all he does for two hours is listen to his Walkman and doodle while planning various ways to make Eddie some friends.

But he gets there, and decides he’ll leave late enough Sunday night that he can sleep the time away. 

He finds Eddie’s dorm, and trails behind some people with keys who presumably live in the building, and they helpfully let him in. He gets all the way to the third floor, which he knows Eddie is on, but beyond that he’s lost. He still thinks it’s impressive he got this far by himself.

“Eddie!” he calls down the hall. It’s bound to get someone’s attention. “Eddie Spaghetti!”

A door opens, but it’s an irritated-looking woman with blonde hair instead of Eddie.

“Excuse me,” she says with a hugely rude tone. “Who are you?” 

“Who are  _ you _ ?”

“Amber. I’m the RA?” She looks to the couple other heads who’ve poked out of their rooms. “Who does this kid belong to?” 

Finally Eddie appears, hopping into the hall as he slides his shoe on. “He’s mine,” he waves. “Sorry.”

“Whoo!” Richie shouts with cupped hands. “Acoustics in here are great!”

“What’s his name?” Amber the RA asks. “Does he go here?”

Eddie crosses his arms once he reaches them, which doesn’t stop Richie from diving in for a hug.

He glowers at th RA over Richie’s shoulder. “Last time I checked this wasn’t a police state, and I’m getting student loans up the whazoo paying to go here, so—”

Amber rolls her eyes and snatches a clipboard off the hall table. “Take a breath, Kaspbrak. He just needs to sign the visitor’s sheet.”

Richie grabs it and scribbles some information on the form before bounding down the hall.

Amber squints at it. “Trashmouth Tuh-tozzer?”

Eddie barks a laugh.

“Please, Tozier’s my father.” Richie winks. “You can call me Trashmouth. It’ll make sense later.”

She scowls. “It makes sense now.”

Richie jumps up to smack an exit sign.

Eddie peeks a look at the sheet and says, “Uh, his name is Richard.”

“Eds, show me your room!” Richie finds a door with ‘EK’ written on the whiteboard and walks right in.

Eddie dashes after him. “Take your shoes off!”

They bicker some more, and Richie gets settled in mostly by snooping through Eddie’s stuff. The walls are beige, with a corkboard filled with class schedules and appointment reminders, but mostly pictures of the Losers. His desk is boringly tidy. The only exciting thing in the whole place is a little ten inch TV with built in VCR. 

Richie opens a drawer. “Why do you still have an inhaler? You don’t have asthma.”

He hasn’t used an inhaler in years.

Eddie ignores him. “I didn’t know you were coming this early. I have a class in twenty minutes.”

“Ugh,  _ lame _ .” He falls back on Eddie’s bed. They’re new sheets, brightly coloured and crisp, but the exact same striped pattern he had in his childhood bedroom. “You gonna skip?”

“No.”

Didn’t expect that anyway. “How big a class is it?”

“Why?” he asks suspiciously.

“Is it in a big-ass lecture hall?”

“You’re not coming.”

“Profs have no way of knowing everybody in those classes. And I can make you some friends there.”

He rolls his eyes. “Why—are—you can’t expect me to believe you won’t cause a ruckus and get me kicked out.”

He frowns. “A lot of people getting kicked out of your college classes, Eddie? I think you can sue for that, you’re paying to be there.”

“You’re staying here.”

“Is that really safer? I’ll rifle through all your shit and find your porn collection.”

“I don’t have  _ porn _ in here.”

“Then I’ll plant some porn.” He cocks his head. “Why don’t you have porn?”

Eddie ends up letting Richie come, as was destined from the moment Richie arrived. 

Sometimes Eddie needs to be talked into things—not necessarily because he doesn’t  _ want _ to do it in the first place, but because he needs to be convinced that the rewards outweigh whatever risks he’s dreaming up. If he really, actually, seriously doesn’t want to, then he won’t even engage in the argument. But once Richie’s got him going, he’s already won.

He just sees it as taking the scenic route. 

As promised, Richie’s on his best behaviour in Eddie’s class—well, better than average. He’s very quiet, but he keeps passes Eddie notes, and doodling the droning professor as something more interesting in his notebook. A dragon prof, a cloud prof, a pineapple prof. It mostly involves adding big glasses and a bushy moustache to the aforementioned subjects, but Eddie gets mad at how much he distracts him, just like in high school.

Richie almost forgot what being in class with Eddie was like. By the end of their high school career, teachers refused to let them sit next to each other. They weren’t a fan of him sitting next to Stan, either. Or Bill. Ben was the only Loser that teachers decided was mature enough to keep Richie in check. If Mike hadn’t been homeschooled, they might have trusted him too, but as it was, teachers would plan their whole seating arrangement so Eddie wouldn’t even be within Richie’s sight line.

He leans over to whisper in Eddie’s ear, “Remember the time I got you detention just by looking at you in Johnson’s English class?”

Eddie cuts him a glare and mutters back, “When we were studying  _ Oedipus Rex _ and you kept licking your lips every time someone mentioned his mom?”

Richie bites his lip to subdue his laughter. “Shit was funny.”

“Shit like that makes me want to bash your head in.” 

A handful of students raise their hand in response to the professor’s question that neither of them had heard.

“Hey,” Richie taps his doodle. “Pay attention to Professor Pineapple, Eddie.”

Eddie crumples the paper in his fist.

They go to a matinee on Saturday, because Eddie decides after two hours at the library that Richie isn’t helping him make friends nor study. Richie’s mission of making Eddie friends has almost immediately fallen by the wayside, because he’s missed him so much he really just wants to hang out with him.

When they get back to campus after seeing  _ The Mask _ , Eddie is begging Richie to stop doing Jim Carrey impressions. Richie refuses. They end up practically wrestling about it as they walk down the quad. 

Richie’s got an arm around his neck, and Eddie’s trying to throw him off, and Richie muses that he could live off this—Eddie’s gleeful laughter, his breath on his clavicle, his ribs cracking against his own.

Richie’s not like this with anyone else. He doesn’t wanna admit it, he’s certainly not thinking it, but a part of himself unlocks when he gets Eddie going. It’s a spark on a flint, every time as empowering as the first time that Eddie snapped back with an acerbic bite when they were kids.

“Hey, watch out!” 

Something bounces off the back of Richie’s skull.

He turns to find a frisbee at his feet. 

“How about  _ you _ watch out?” Eddie says to someone Richie hasn’t put eyes on yet.

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, “you trynna decapitate me?”

A Black guy in a neon print shirt jogs up. “Hey, sorry man.” He takes in the two of them all wrapped up in each other. “Oh, Eddie, you’re—I thought you had a germ thing?”

Eddie lets go of Richie to cross his arms. “If by ‘germ thing’ you mean a healthy trepidation of contracting deadly diseases.”

Richie bites down a grin.

“Yeah, exactly,” the guy agrees, and he doesn’t even roll his eyes. “You didn’t wanna come to parties because of it?”

Richie’s eye widen. “Eds, you were invited to parties? We’re going to the next one.” 

The other guy grins.

“You don’t even know this man!” Eddie objects.

“Yeah, he was in your stats class,” Richie says. “He gave a lot of right answers. Seems like a fine, upstanding citizen.”

“That’s me, bro.” The guy extends his hand to Richie, then takes it back. “Unless you also have a healthy apprehension of—?”

Richie shakes his hand. “Richie.”

“Colby,” he says. He nods at Eddie. “I’m good, but this guy’s unreal. Won’t come to our study group, though. Guess he doesn’t need it.”

Richie gives Eddie a shake from where he’s positioned under his arm. Complaining that he can’t make friends, but he’s getting invites to parties and study groups. This fucking kid. “Maybe after some parties, huh?”

“We’re not going—”

“There’s always cool stuff happening around here,” Colby says. “I’ll keep you updated.”

“Appreciate it, man!”

Eddie glowers at Richie.

Colby salutes them with the frisbee and jogs away.

Richie ruffles Eddie’s hair. “Easy peasy.”

Eddie doesn’t look any happier as they walk back to his dorm.

“Dude, if you don’t wanna go to a party, at least go to the guy’s study group. This—” He waves his arms at the encounter that just happened. “—is how you can make friends. Impress people with your nerd shit, and then agree to hang out with him when they ask.”

He pouts. “You don’t think he was making fun of me?”

“No. Has he made fun of you before?”

He kicks a pebble down the path in front of them. “I mean… I guess not. I dunno. Sometimes people are nice just to make fun of you later.”

Richie wraps an arm around his shoulders. “You’ve got trust issues, man.”

“You’re not worried people are laughing at you behind your back?”

“Hey, at least they’re laughing,” Richie says. And then, because it’s the closest Eddie’s got to talking about the phone call that brought Richie here in the first place, he tries to offer some vulnerability of his own. “Better than not paying attention to me at all.”

“Oof, what kind of issues are those?” Eddie asks with a soft smile. He takes his key out to unlock his dorm building, knocking shoulders with Richie as he does so.

He snorts. “The kind that make you wanna be an actor.”

They don’t get any deeper into it than that, which is probably for the best. Richie’s a distraction from problems—when he’s not the problem to begin with—not a solution.

The morning after the sleep over, Richie’s mom disappeared to have a lie down while the two boys waited in the front room. They flipped through Richie’s dad vinyl collection until they heard a car pulling up outside.

Through gauzy curtains that hid them from view, they watched in disappointment as Eddie’s mom lumbered up Richie’s snowy driveway to pick Eddie up. 

Richie blew her a kiss. Eddie grabbed the kiss out of the air, smacked Richie’s cheek, and kissed him on the other one.

“See ya, loser.” Eddie scooped his duffel bag off the ground and slipped out the front door to protect Richie’s mom from his mom’s interrogation on Eddie’s overnight health.

At the edge of the woods a week later, after four straight days of hang out time dedicated to searching for Georgie, Bill finally agreed to spend the weekend building a massive snow fort.

It ended up being a bunch of walls that didn’t connect, like in paint ball, but it still drew the attention of neighbourhood kids. A snowball fight broke out to keep ownership, and then then between just the four of them for fun when the other kids left. 

By the time they stopped for breath, the sun was hanging low over the horizon, leaving the sky tinted that light blue before the night falls.

Richie watched Eddie dip behind a wall that reached just over his head. He threw the last snowball in his hand at Bill’s back for good measure, and then went to hide with Eddie. 

Eddie’s toque slumped over his forehead, the big pompom on top sliding downward. His nose was red as a rash as he sucked on his inhaler.

Richie slammed into him as he sat. “You good?” His breath puffed white in the cold air.

Eddie shook his head. “I’m freezing my ass off and all my sweat is getting my shirt soggy.”

He wiped his runny nose on his mitten. “Well that’s your fault for being cold and sweaty at the same time, isn’t it?”

Eddie glowered at him, only his dark eyes and nose visible between his hat and scarf. 

Richie smiled and ducked in close. He leisurely rubbed the tip of his nose against Eddie’s.

He kept his position. His glasses fogged. “That help?”

His scarf hid his audible pout. “How would that help, Richie? You just got dried snot all over me.”

Richie threw his head back and laughed.

Bill jumped out from behind the wall and decked him with a snowball.

They were hanging out in Stan’s basement, having a competition to see who could blow the biggest bubble with their gum. Bill won, though Richie insisted he cheated somehow. 

After that, Richie was spread across the couch, jaw sore and mouth minty fresh. He snuck a look at Eddie, who was asking Stan about board games. 

Stan and Bill went to the back room to look.

Eddie watched them go, head tilted against the couch. Once they were out of sight, Eddie turned to face him. Richie was already leaning across the couch to kiss him. 

It was quick, the peck that Richie gave him.

Eddie gave one back.

And then Richie gave another.

It was the same way they flung insults, complete with the excited thrill that ran up Richie’s spine every time Eddie came back for more.

“We found Monopoly!” Stan called.

Richie and Eddie shot apart like polarized magnets.

Bill walked back into the room. “Richie, you p-p-promise not to flip the board when you start losing?” 

“ _ When _ ?” Richie replied haughtily. Stan plopped himself between him and Eddie, and Richie’s disappointment ruined his train of thought to a good comeback. “That’s so rude.”

After that, Richie started carrying around mint gum. Eddie, too, made it a staple in his fanny pack. So it became something they did, just like joking and fighting and protecting each other.

They kissed in the woods when the four of them went hiking, popping behind trees for cover. They kissed in the back hall of the arcade. They kissed underwater at the quarry when it got warm enough to swim.

It was so innocuous, harmless,  _ fun, _ that Richie had himself convinced it was altogether separate from the sinful behaviour he’d been told to loathe his whole life.

For a while, at least.

Richie makes use of Eddie’s extra bed while he’s there for the weekend. Growing up, they did eventually stop sleeping together at sleepovers—when they finally got too big to fit in a twin without spooning. If either of them had a queen, he’s sure he’d have made the argument they were too old to sleep on the floor.

Eddie comes back from his Sunday morning run and takes a shower while Richie’s still mostly asleep in bed.

He catches a blurry glimpse of Eddie popping out to his dresser in a towel, and deems this important enough to shove his glasses on to see him better.

Eddie’s shoulders are definitely broader than the last time Richie saw him shirtless. And there are some muscles flexing down his back, too. Not anything outrageous—he wouldn’t even have noticed if he hadn’t grown up with the skinny twig of a kid—but he suddenly looks like a grown up.

Richie whistles from the pillow his face is still buried in. “Little Eddie been working out?”

He turns around, a flush spread across his chest. “Well I’m not doing track anymore, but I still run. And I do calisthenics.”

Richie pops an incredulous brow. 

His  _ mom _ does calisthenics. Or, at the very least, she watches VHS tapes of women in brightly coloured spandex do it.

Eddie lifts his chin and defends, “Weekly exercise is important for your heart health, Richie.”

Eddie in a towel, on the other hand, is not good for Richie’s heart health. 

He decides he’s jealous. He looks down at his own scrawny chest. “Fuck, should I be working out?”

“Try quitting smoking first,” Eddie tosses over his shoulder as he returns to the bathroom with fresh clothes.

Richie stretches his neck to watch him go.

Richie gets home on Sunday, and he knows he just left Eddie in another city, but he still turns his head expecting him to be there to listen to his story about the train ride he just had. So he calls him, and they talk for twenty minutes.

And Eddie calls back later that night saying Colby invited him again to a weekly study group on Tuesdays.

Richie emails him Monday morning before class, then calls Eddie five minutes later asking if he got the email. Eddie sends him five websites detailing illnesses commonly contracted from student housing, and then Richie stops reading his emails. Eddie calls him that night asking why Richie hasn’t responded to his emails.

Then Tuesday, obviously Richie calls to convince Eddie to go to the study group. Eddie calls after to discuss how it went, and that conversation lasts an hour.

Wednesday, Richie goes to the campus gym with Jordan, and after getting winded five minutes into Jordan’s suggested workout routine, Richie decides that Eddie was right—Richie  _ did _ need to stop smoking first. But he can’t be assed to do that, so he ditches the whole gym idea instead.

He calls a laboriously unsurprised Eddie after, and they talk until his roommate Lucas unplugs the phone line so he can grab the phone to make a call.

Richie’s back in the comforting rhythm of their childhood, only now Eddie isn’t just a bike ride away, and it’s the most annoying thing in the world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! You may have noticed I added a chapter amount out of 13, but the """epilogue""" is sitting at about 12,000 words right now (I always end up doing that, I just can't stop talking), so I may still split that up. But you've got an estimate now, at least.  
TW for panic attacks, homophobic bullying

“You busy this weekend?” Richie asks Eddie the Thursday after his first visit.

He ignores the hardest of glares from his roommate Lucas, who’d been reaching for the phone the same time Richie snagged it.

“Uh, homework, the usual,” Eddie says. “Why?”

“I’ll come by again?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

“There’s no party,” he warns.

“So? There was no party last time either. You don’t just wanna see me?”

Eddie hums like he has to think about it.

“Dick,” Richie says. “We’ll do something you like, don’t worry.”

Lucas grabs for the phone and Richie trots backwards.

“Like what?”

“You don’t know what you like?” Richie ducks away from Lucas’ hand.

Eddie makes a grumbling sound. “Can you believe I actually kind of miss the arcade?”

Richie sidesteps the game station on the floor, which Lucas bought with the money he made “interning” (translation: getting high in the parking lot) at his dad’s law office over the summer. 

He grins. “I got something even better.”

When Friday rolls around, its just his roommate Jordan’s girlfriend rolling a joint in the living room as Richie unhooks the many wires of the game station from the TV.

“Where are you taking that?” Clara’s voice is sharp, not because she’s necessarily angry (though she probably is) but because that’s the way she chooses to talk.

Richie can’t imagine how Jordan gets through sex hearing that. Then again, Richie doesn’t understand how a girl as smart as Clara puts up with the likes of Jordan. She’s chubby, so maybe she thinks she can’t do any better. Same reason why Ben never took his shot with Bev, even after kissing her brought her back from the deadlights. 

“Is it yours?” Richie shoots back.

They both know it’s not. 

“It’s not  _ yours _ ,” she says.

“I’m borrowing it while I stay at a friend’s.”

“You don’t have friends.”

“I have friends.”

“They all live in this house.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong.” He shoves the game station and a couple of games in his backpack. “These people aren’t my friends.”

She stands as he heads for the door. “Did you at least tell Lucas you’re taking it?”

“You think that’s important, you can do it yourself.” He tosses a hand over his shoulder. “Peace out!”

They play games all weekend. Well, most of the weekend. Eddie, shockingly, actually wants to get schoolwork done, so he makes them an honest-to-god schedule of work versus play because he’s the biggest tightwad. Richie can’t believe how much he’s missed him.

Richie tries to convince Eddie that the only homework he has is to watch TV to study the acting, but he sees right through that, so Richie actually gets two overdue written reflections done, and a head start on a thematic Shakespeare essay. 

He  _ does _ like his major, which is more than he can say for most people. For half the losers, even. And they may just be complaining about how hard their classes are, or they may actually hate what they’re spending all their time and money on. It’s hard to tell the difference, and they’re in second year now. Hard to double back.

But if he’d known theatres classes still involved homework, he really, truly would’ve skipped college altogether and just gotten a job at any old NY diner.

“You’re an idiot,” Eddie says when Richie expresses that sentiment. “This is the  _ least _ you can be doing, Mr. I-Get-Straight-A’s-Without-Ever-Opening-a-Textbook.”

“Fuck off, you sound like my dad.”

His dad had given this sigh of resignation when Richie announced he was going to school for drama. “Four years of straight A’s, Richie, and you want to waste your brain on theatre?”

“High school grades don’t mean anything. Especially not here. What’s it say about this place that they would’ve made  _ me _ valedictorian if they didn’t know I’d made a joke out of it?”

“It’s not the school’s fault you can’t take anything seriously,” his dad said, completely missing the point.

“You’re absolutely right,” Richie said. “The school didn’t raise me.”

His dad gave what was supposed to be a knowing look, except he didn’t know Richie at all. “Do you think you’ll fail if you do something that actually challenges you?”

“Since when are you a therapist? Get off my dick, I’m gonna act. You’re lucky I’m going to college at all.”

His dad had shaken his head, radiating disappointment, but didn’t argue any further. He didn’t give enough of a shit to fight for what he’d convinced himself was a better future for his son.

Richie throws his pen down on the mattress he’s sprawled across. “Can we play games now? Jesus, how are you making me do homework on a weekend?”

“When else are you supposed to do homework?” Eddie asks from his desk. 

“An hour before it’s due? Hellooo?”

“You get that you’re paying for this education, right? That thousands of dollars are coming out of your bank account every year, and it you don’t take this seriously and get a good job, you’re gonna be paying off student loans until you hit retirement.”

Richie gags. “You just said so many ugly words, Eds! Seriously, you trying to pass your anxiety around?”

It  _ does _ get to him. Because if he lives until retirement, that’ll be after he’s forty, after twenty seven years since that doomed summer. He’s a lot less scared of student loans than he is of a murderous clown demon he’s sworn to protect the world against, but that doesn’t mean student loans don’t stress him out. What if the fucker manifests as a pile of final notice bills the next time they run into him?

A shiver shakes Richie like he’s jammed his finger in a power socket. He stands. “You got any booze?”

Eddie’s gone quiet, and he’s staring at his hands. His face has shuttered down with all too familiar worry.

“What?” Richie says. “I’m not an alcoholic, I swear.”

His head snaps up. “Why would you say— _ are _ you an alcoholic?”

“I just said I wasn’t! Are you okay?”

Eddie tries to smooth out his features, but a permanent crease that’s been forming since he was twelve dents the skin between his brows.

Richie chews on a hangnail. Waits. Eddie doesn’t want to discuss the hysterical phone call that had prompted the first visit (Richie’s own loneliness notwithstanding). So he’s not gonna, and would in fact be quite happy to continue their light-hearted weekend with nothing to bring it down, but… He’d called Richie for a reason. And Richie kinda wants to know the details.

“I’m fine,” Eddie insists. He plops onto the floor in front of the TV. “Let’s play games.”

Richie’s nothing if not accommodating, so he grabs a new game from his backpack and boots up the gaming console. The main screen is just flickering to life when he hears the first wheeze.

Richie turns slowly. Eddie’s curled himself into a ball.

“Eddie—”

His head shakes, but that may be from the way his whole body is trembling, just a little. “I’m fine,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Eds, it’s okay,” he says, voice steady. 

Richie holds his hand out, an offer, because after that summer, Eddie wasn’t the only loser who got like this, and everybody didn’t always wanna be touched all the time. Eddie would jerk away when anyone tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, yelling and freaking out until they all stopped trying. But as long as they stayed calm, he’d eventually calm down, too.

He wonders who’s helped Eddie since he left Derry. The realistic answer of ‘no one’ comes depressingly quick. Fuck. 

“My inhaler,” Eddie chokes out. “I need my inhaler.”

“You don’t have asthma, dude,” Richie reminds him. They’d stopped accepting these as asthma attacks  _ years _ ago, even though it had been so easy for Eddie’s mom to trick him into believing it.

“Richie! Just—just—” His chest heaves with the energy he’s exerting to breathe. 

Richie hops up to dig through the desk drawer Eddie had thrown the inhaler in when Richie questioned it last time. Where did he even  _ get _ this? He returns to Eddie on the floor and gives it to him anyway. Eddie shakes the inhaler and sucks in two long pulls just like when he was a kid. 

Not like it’s gonna do anything.

Eddie’s rocking a little now. “I just—I infect everybody with my anxiety, I don’t mean to, it just comes out, and nobody wants to be around me and—” He takes another gasping breath.

After a lifetime of Richie defending himself with ‘it’s just a joke’, the sentiment turns to ash in his mouth. So he doesn’t say it.

“That doesn’t come from you, Eds,” he says heavily. Guiltily.

He offers his hand again.

Eddie’s own hand jerks out to take it, and he squeezes Richie’s fingers to his chest. Richie takes that as his cue to wrap an arm around his shoulders, clutching him against him. He always thought Ben was the best at this part, his hugs soft and steady and an endless stream of comfort. 

“Don’t—don’t worry about it.” Richie sets his chin on top of Eddie’s head, completely wrapped around him. “I was being a dick.”

Eddie shudders and buries his face in the crook of Richie’s arm. “Fuck, Rich, I—I lied, I  _ did _ get assigned a roommate this year, but he said fuck no because last—last year I—” He sucks in a breath. “I scared away my roommate in the first two weeks! Nobody wants anything to do with me—”

“Hey.  _ I _ want something to do with you,” he argues. “And you didn’t even want a roommate—”

“I don’t want to be like this either!” His back heaves against Richie’s chest. “I’m like the fucking plague, Richie, and no one wants to be friends with the  _ plague _ . So what’s stupid is I don’t trust when someone tries—because what shitty judgement, or—or ulterior motives do they have if they want to put up with me—”

None of Richie’s witty quips that roll off the tongue so easily are suited for this. So he’s at a loss, which is typical, because he’s gotten pretty good at distracting Eddie from a panic attack by startling a laugh out of him, but the ‘comforting’ part has always eluded Richie.

And Eddie’s still  _ wheezing _ . Shit, Richie knows it’s not asthma, but childhood instincts make him want Eddie to give that inhaler another go anyway.

“I’m just—” Eddie curls into him, digging his forehead into Richie’s collar bone. He’s less frantic when he speaks again; instead offering a quiet, shameful confession. “I’m lonely and terrified and everything my mother always wanted me to be.”

Which hits Richie like a rusty knife to the chest. He rubs Eddie’s back, and fumbles out, “Fuck. First of all—fuck that bitch, okay? Second…”

He  _ wants _ to say something poignant about Eddie’s bravery. He wants to convince him that he’s incredible, and funny, and the people here are lucky to have him in their lives every day. He wants Eddie to believe in the love all the losers have for him.

But it all gets tied up and knotted within him, so fervent and honest that something else he can’t even process might leak out with it.

So somehow he can’t say any of that, but he manages to get honest about himself for a minute.

“During orientation week last year, I balled my eyes out in the middle of a team building exercise,” Richie says. Eddie’s shocked enough that his next heaving breath turns into a hiccup. “They put us into groups and we were supposed to do two truths and a lie, but all I could think of were lies because they wouldn’t believe my truths and I didn’t want to tell them, anyway. And I couldn’t… what I say is trash, you know? It’s not real. I don’t know how to let it be real.”

And he spiralled so fast down that rabbit hole, because if he couldn’t think of two truths for a stupid ice breaker game, then how was he ever gonna be real enough with a new person to get loved by them? And the losers had just scattered to the winds, leaving him alone without them for the first time in what felt like his whole life, and it was all too much.

“So whatever,” Richie continues, already trying to shrug it off. “I hid in the bathroom until I stopped crying, because no one’s gonna know me like you guys because I’m not gonna  _ let _ them, so I’m gonna be alone forever.” 

Eddie lifts his head. He’s stopped wheezing. 

It takes everything in Richie to meet Eddie’s eye, and when he does he’s looking at him so soft and so close that Richie could break in two. One stray word and everything he’s bottled up his whole life will come spilling out.

Eddie’s cheeks are pink, and his eyes shine. His weight and warmth in Richie’s arms are suddenly much too tangible.

Richie swallows. He doesn’t move, as though staying perfectly still will insulate him in the moment before he has to decide what to do next.

Eddie’s the one to tear his gaze away. His voice is steady but subdued when he says, “You… thanks. I didn’t mean to dump this all on you.”

Which doesn’t make any sense to Richie. “I’m your best friend. What do you think I’m here for?” 

He shifts away from Richie to face him properly, and he immediately feels untethered without his unbearable closeness. 

“I just,” Eddie says, “I don’t want to be worried about.”

He knows that, and he knows why—Eddie’s mom had worried about him all his life, and it never gave him anything but suffocating attention and various neuroses he’s already hauling into adulthood.

“Do you worry about me?” Richie asks.

He’s stupidly aware that his heart thuds twice in his chest before Eddie answers.

“Yeah.”

“So isn’t it even?”

Eddie looks away again. 

There’s this aching tension that Richie desperately wants to pop with a pussy joke, but for the life of him he can’t think of any that would work.

“I’m… I’m okay, you know?” Eddie tries to convince him. “I’m good. I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, of course. Clearly, we’re all the poster children for perfect mental health, Eds.”

That gets a dry chuckle out of Eddie, and Richie lets his shoulders relax.

“I know you’re a big boy now, Eddie,” he assures him, giving his knee a shake. Eddie responds with a glare, and Richie grins. “Which is good, because it’s not like I can help with that shit.”

“You helped fine,” he mutters, which is almost assuredly a lie. He rubs a hand over his face. “That tired me out, though. Can we take a nap?”

“Sure, whatever you want.” 

He’s not sure why he has to sleep just because Eddie does, but then Eddie rises and scratches the back of his head. “Like—like when we were kids.”

And Richie agrees, but that could mean so many things. When they were really little, it meant changing into footie pajamas and getting tucked into the same bed by Richie’s mom. Or it meant fighting for who got stuck by the wall, and Richie crawling over Eddie in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, using all his elbows and knees to wake Eddie up to remind him how much of a nuisance they both were.

It meant brushing their teeth together like an old married couple and then putting their clean mouths to good use.

Richie doesn’t ask which he means, just climbs in bed next to Eddie and lays his head on the pillow. 

The bed’s bigger than the clubhouse hammock, but they’re both bigger and longer than they were the last time they shared it. Richie turns on his side, facing Eddie’s back, and slings an arm around him just to fit. Eddie covers his arm over his. 

Richie inhales where his face currently is positioned at the back of Eddie’s neck, and he smells like sweat and laundry detergent.

They lie awake a long time before Eddie drifts off. There’s this unruly flapping in Richie’s chest, words and phrases jumbled together like the same paper put through a typewriter a hundred times. 

On any given day you couldn’t pay either of them to stop talking, but in this moment they’re silent, and Richie can’t even form the shape of the feeling he’d want to speak. 

Richie hadn’t always duck-and-covered away from any emotional vulnerability likely to get him called a queer by his classmates. He used to splatter his feelings everywhere like paint—good feelings, bad feelings, embarrassing feelings. 

When he was young enough not to know any better, he cried all the time. Because everything was the biggest fucking deal, whether it was not getting invited to a birthday party, or the bullies at school, or his mom refusing to buy him the sugary cereal he wanted. It was all a catastrophe of monumental proportions, but everybody was always trying to convince him it wasn’t that bad. And sometimes they were right, but sometimes they weren’t. Either way, the severity was never the point. 

Once, when he was seven and fell out of a tree that his dad had told him not to climb, Richie had screamed bloody murder over his broke his wrist. His parents and sister had come racing over, terrified for the wellbeing of their littlest whiner.

His mom let him sit on her lap on the way to the hospital, and she stroked his hair the whole time, and when his dad tried to tell Richie to stop crying so he could concentrate on the road, his mom shushed his dad, offering to break his wrist to see how he liked it. On the way home, his dad bought him an ice cream cone, and that night his sister let Richie pick whatever games they played.

Every tear and scream since then was a futile attempt to return to that sense of comfort, when people dropped everything to care about him.

But crying only progressively got him in worse shit.

Like in sixth grade, some guys pushed him at recess and he scraped his elbow off the concrete. It was before his growth spurt, he was still as small as Eddie, so he was an easy target. But he was definitely old enough that crying at school was embarrassing, so he kept his face pressed to the ground so they wouldn’t see. 

They kicked his ribs to flip him over.

“Stop it!” he sobbed, balling himself up against a wall. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You got in my way,” one of the boys said. They towered over him, blocking him from any teacher’s view—not like they’d do anything anyway.

“And now you’re fucking crying like a baby.”

“I’ll  _ give _ this pussy something to cry about.”

Which was annoying, because Richie was clearly already crying. But the boys reared his head back, and released a tell-tale hacking from his throat that signalled a loogie was incoming, so Richie threw his arms over his face to protect himself.

Before he could get hit with any biological warfare though, he heard the reedy cry of, “Leave him alone!” 

And then Eddie was elbowing past the bullies and wrapping his arms around Richie, a hug and a shield all at once. Richie buried his face in his shirt. His mom always used double the recommended amount of fabric softener to protect Eddie’s sensitive skin.

“Ew, what are you doing?” one of the boys sneered with newly found disgust. “You homos gonna kiss?” 

Richie froze straight as a board; he was sure his heart stopped beating. Eddie didn’t waver.

“Fuck off!” Eddie tossed over his shoulder.

A teacher heard  _ that _ of course, and appeared out of thin air to chastise Eddie for his language, but it made the bullies lose interest.

Richie was still crying, less from the pain and more from the bully’s accusation. People kept saying that about him, but it was a wrong thing to be, so he wasn’t  _ like _ that. He wasn’t!

Eddie had released him when the teacher came over, and Richie jerked away when Eddie tried to touch his arm to inspect his wound.

“Does it hurt?”

Richie nodded.

“I’ll take you to the nurse.”

The nurse was actually just the lunch lady with a first aid kit. Richie kicked his feet absently from atop the cafeteria’s kitchen counter as she tutted at him.

She pointed at his tear-streaked cheeks. “You can’t keep crying like this, kid. It only makes it worse.”

“Then tell those ass— _ assembly _ of ruffians to quit it!” Eddie cut in. He’d said his first cuss word last week and it had rapidly become his favourite way to communicate, but he didn’t want it getting back to his mother.

Even though the lunch lady-nurse didn’t give a shit. 

“Hey, those assholes are gonna be assholes their whole lives.” She said to Richie, “Are you gonna be a crybaby your whole life, too?”

Richie shook his head, wiping his face on his T-shirt sleeve. That’s when she wiped his scraped elbow with a stinging disinfectant. 

“Mother fucker!” he yelped.

Richie, on the other hand, had been swearing for years, since his parents had never made an attempt to watch their language in front of him. His teachers had stopped calling to complain.

“There ya go,” the lunch lady said approvingly as she slapped a bandage on. “Don’t show them how much it hurts, it’s what they want.”

Richie glared at her, cradling his arm to his chest.

“What do you want, a sticker? Get out of my kitchen.”

Eddie tried to check her work as they walked down the hall, but Richie kept tugging his arm out of reach when Eddie tried to touch him.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Richie insisted.

His forehead creased like folded paper. “Liar.”

Richie stopped. Angry responses rose in his throat like vomit— _ why’d you have to hug me? Why’d you have to show them how weak I am? Why’d you give me what I wanted when I couldn’t enjoy it? _

But fresh tears pricked his eyelids when the words got clogged in his throat, so he swallowed them all.

“Shut up,” Richie said instead.

“Never.”

When they rise from their nap Eddie takes a shower, which gives Richie, king of repression, time to shake off the cloying vulnerability he’d woken with. He doesn’t stay in the bed, even though it’s still warm and smells like Eddie.

He throws a window open to let in the crisp fall air and then starts up the game console to get back to their regularly scheduled programming of fucking around and not discussing anything of consequence.

When Eddie comes back, Richie runs his mouth, complaining that Eddie’s TV is too small for the game graphics, and that he should keep Richie’s favourite snacks stocked in his room at all times, and acts as a general nuisance as he stacks up more and more words between them until there’s no way to climb back to the point they’d been at before their nap.

So, yeah. Mostly, Richie and Eddie play video games that weekend.

Lucas is livid when Richie finally gets home late Sunday night with his game station.

“I could’ve called the cops on you, man!”

“Did you?”

“No.”

Richie throws a baggie of fresh weed he’d grabbed on his way home for this such occasion. “Then chillax.”

Lucas takes a sniff and narrows his eyes at Richie, but it’s hard to be mad when you’ve got weed in hand. “You got lucky this time, Tozier. Don’t pull that shit again.”

“Uh huh.” He grabs the phone off the coffee table and calls Eddie on the way to his room.

It’s three weeks later, and Richie has to get his own phone. No, really, his roommates are ordering him to get his own goddamn phone or they’ll start locking him out of the house.

“You use the phone more than all of us combined,” Lucas complains. “And I have a girlfriend in Montana!”

Richie looks at him sincerely. “You need to call your girlfriend more, dude. Do you need relationship advice? She probably misses you.” He cups his hands around his mouth and crows, “Unless she’s sucking another dude’s dick by now!”

Jordan, at least, laughs. Clara scrunches her nose. Clara, who does not live here, and yet has called this roommate meeting.

Another of his roommates, who’s usually in his attic room or at the library, pipes up. “And not just another phone to use in your room so we don’t have to search your pile of dirty clothes every time the phone rings. I mean your own phone  _ line _ .”

“It’s not that bad.” Richie tries to shrug it off, even though he knows he’s lying.

Last year he was in the dorms, so if he wanted to call his friends he had to use a pay phone. Now, he may be kind of drunk on phone freedom. And maybe his roommates are gonna kill him if his nightly, hour-long chats with Eddie didn’t stop interfering with calling their girlfriends, or moms, or ordering pizza, or contacting the authorities. (Clara had sworn she saw a rabid raccoon wandering the neighbourhood and demanded Richie hang up so she could call animal control. He’d staunchly refused).

“Look, this is non-negotiable,” Clara says.

He waves her off. “Start paying rent, Clara, and then maybe I’ll give a shit.”

“Seriously, Tozier.” Jordan crosses his arms. “Get your own phone or I’m gonna start hiding your keys.”

“Fine,” Richie sighs, because this conversation was boring him. “Who wants to drive me to the mall?”

He’s almost gotten run over a dozen times trying to ride his bike in this stupid city.

Clara eventually ends up dropping him off, because she’s got some club meeting at school and needs to leave anyway. She drives a ratty 1983 Corolla that drives like it’s from 1973. She’s only got a vehicle in New York of all places because she’s from Buffalo and visits her family all the time. Details that Richie doesn’t care to know, but she was in two of his classes last year and is in three of them now, and she’s always at his house. So he’s well-acquainted with her life.

“You need therapy,” she says as she pulls onto the street.

She also, unfortunately, appears to be well-acquainted with  _ his _ life.

“Is that supposed to be a dig?” Richie rolls the window down. 

“It’s not a dig. It’s a suggestion.”

“Well I’m halfway through your last suggestion, so let’s see how this phone thing goes first, huh?”

Her mouth twists, half her face obscured by her permed bangs. 

Richie wants to let it go, but, “Why the fuck do you think I need therapy?”

“Besides who you are fundamentally as a person?” she asks dryly.

“Fuck off.”

She turns left at a light before she continues. “I mean, your little friend’s name is Eddie, right?”

His face heats. “So?”

“So you wake the whole house up screaming his name at night at least twice a week,” Clara says, too truthful, as always. “Is that why you’re always calling him?”

He clenches his jaw. “I don’t just call Eddie.” 

He tries to call each of the losers once a week—one weekday for each of them, except Eddie who he talks to every day, and who always answers, if he isn’t the one calling in the first place.

Not that that was really her question.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

“Nunya? As in Nunya business. Beeswax, not yours. Et cetera, et cetera.” He crosses his arms, forcibly casual.

She’s unfazed. “Jordan says it wasn’t as bad last year.”

“Jesus, Clara. Again, not that it’s any of your business, but I haven’t been drinking and smoking myself into a stupor every night this year, so excuse me if my sobriety has side-effects!”

She finally shuts up. Hopefully she feels guilty enough to never bring this up again. 

It unsettles him that she even bothered to address how very not well he’s been doing, because though he’s not particularly adept at hiding it, nobody but the losers had expressed any interest in discussing  _ why _ he was such a mess in a very long time.

They’re almost at the mall when Clara speaks up again. “You gonna be free to rehearse that  _ Streetcar _ scene tomorrow?”

“What?”

“ _ Streetcar Named Desire _ , Richie. I swear to god, you better have the lines memorized, we’re presenting on Wednesday—”

So it appears she’s not feeling guilty at all. Dick.

“Yeah, yeah, of course I do.” Well, he  _ will _ . She stops at a red light a block away from the mall and Richie hops out of the car. “You’re always at my house, it’s not like you can’t track me down.”

He slams the door on her retort.

At the phone store, they try to upsell him into a brick of a cellular phone, which costs more than his rent. Where would he even store that while he was walking around? What a joke.

Even with just a new home phone and plan, his budget is getting stretched thin. He might need to get a job to continue his extravagant lifestyle of semi-regular train trips while also still buying food.

Or start writing essays for cash again. Yeah, yeah he’ll do that. A real job would interfere with time better spent on the important things, like video games, and sleeping, and visiting Eddie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this chapter a lot, but my fave chapter is actually the next one, so I'm very excited all around to have this posted.  
Please let me know how you liked it!!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your feedback so far, I really appreciate it!  
I'm very excited to post this chapter, so I hope you're excited to read it :D  
TW drugs, alcohol, some internalized homophobia

Richie’s new phone rings from the floor under his desk, already treated with the care and reverence of all his other possessions. He reaches down to grab it without looking away from the raggedy copy of _ Wuthering Heights _ in his free hand.

“Dunkin’ Donuts, how you wanna get dunked on today?” Richie says once the phone is tucked into the crook of his neck.

“I called the number Ben gave us at the b-b-beginning of the year and they said you didn’t have that number anymore?” Bill asks without a greeting. Absolutely no phone etiquette, this one. “Did you get kicked out?”

Richie hops out of his chair and goes out to the staircase landing. Downstairs, Lucas is sitting on the couch with text books spread across the coffee table. Richie points at the phone next to him. “Did you seriously give him my new number instead of passing me that phone?”

“Nicky’s supposed to call me in an hour, I’m not risking it.”

“I’m not gonna talk to Bill for an hour!”

“I’ve heard that before, Tozier.”

Richie kicks his door closed with a roll of his eyes. “What’s up, Bill?”

“You d-d-don’t wanna talk to me for an hour?” he says. “It’s not like you have homework.

Richie sits back down at his desk and copies out a quote that’ll support his thesis. “I’ll have you know, I have a lot of other people’s homework to do.”

He groans. “You’re not plagiarizing essays again, are you?”

“I’m not doing anything but writing essays for fun that freshmen happen to give me fifty bucks for.”

“Is that really how much counterfeit papers cost?”

Richie shrugs. “It’s how much _ I _ charge. I skulk around the library looking for desperate faces and cries of ‘_It’s due tomorrow!_’ They’ll pay anything.”

“That chaotic evil, man.”

“Nerd,” he tosses out.

“What do you need the money for, anyway?”

“Train tickets,” Richie replies without thinking. He tacks on quick, “And, y’know, takeout and rent.”

Bill, of course, doesn’t miss a thing. “Ah yes, I learned about this in psych class. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—shelter, food, and _ Eddie_.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Richie grumbles. Bill laughs, because he’s a dick. “You’re the one who said we needed to stay in touch.”

“So when’re you visiting me? Or Ben? Or Stan?”

“Move closer and I’ll visit, dickwad,” he says as he polishes off his conclusion. “Did you just call to roast me, or can I help you with something?”

They chat about what Bill’s been up to in his neck of the woods—mostly reading and writing, funnily enough for an English major. He goes into a bit of detail about his latest creative writing assignment and then says, “You seeing your parents after exams?”

Exams are far enough away that they’re not even in Richie’s periphery, but close enough that good students are probably already planning for them, and the holiday break after.

“I think my mom said something about visiting family in Michigan for the holidays,” Richie says. Between Derry and butt-fuck nowhere Michigan in the middle of winter, he’ll still take Michigan. “Eddie’s not going back, either.”

His and Richie’s families were the only ones still in Derry. Except for Mike, of course.

They’re on the same wavelength.

“Oh, okay,” Bill says. “I found this record I thought Mike would like. I guess I can just mail it to him.” 

“You know I sent him a letter?” Richie says. 

“In the mail?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Richie shrugs. “He lives all the way at the edge of town, no A/C or dial-up. Does he even _ have _ a phone?”

“You know d-d-damn well he has a phone,” Bill says flatly.

“Well he barely answers when I call him.”

“Do you call him past ten pm like an asshole?”

Richie’s silence speaks volumes.

“Did he reply?” Bill sighs.

“Yeah.” He stands up to stretch. “Fucker sent back one page that just said ‘Punk’. He wasted a fifteen cent stamp on one word!”

“What did your letter say?”

“Irrelevant.”

“_ Highly _ relevant,” he argues.

Richie’s phone beeps with an incoming call. “Sorry, Bill, gotta go.”

“Lemme guess—” he starts knowingly.

But Richie doesn’t let him guess. He switches lines and answers Eddie’s call.

One time during junior year of high school, Richie cancelled plans with Bill to help Eddie clean his house, because his mom was making him tidy up before she had the neighbourhood ladies over for a Tupperware party or whatever.

Bill and Richie were walking home from school, and a slow comprehension dawned on Bill’s face; raised brows and mouth shaped with a silent ‘Oh’. He said, “So Eddie’s your best friend now.” 

He wasn’t jealous or even that surprised, he was just sharing a realization.

“We’re all best friends, dingus,” Richie replied. And even if he’d needed to write a list for some reason, Bill would be at the top.

“No, your _ best _best friend,” he clarified. “It’s b-b-been Eddie for a while now.”

“No it hasn’t. I think I’d know who my own best best friend is, Bill. It’s you.”

He nodded, totally not buying it. And for weeks after that whenever Richie would know some obscure fact about Eddie, or pick him to be his partner for a game or project, Bill would get this smug, knowing look in his eye.

“Why are you flipping Bill off?” Eddie asked when he and Richie decided to leave the clubhouse at the same time one night.

“Because he’s a dick,” Richie said. Eddie accepted that as an answer. They walked through the forest for a minute before Richie asked, “Hey, who’s your _ best _ best friend?”

He tilted his head as he considered. “Uh, Bill, I guess.”

“Right?” Richie agreed. “Yeah, Bill.”

“Although…” Eddie tilted his head the other way. 

“What?”

“Trying to remember the last time I hung out with just Bill.” He scrunched his nose up the longer they walked, looking none too pleased. “Shit, if we’re going by how I spend my time…”

“Uh huh?” Richie prompted, though he knew how that sentence ended. 

They got out of the forest, and the moon lit the sidewalk home.

Eddie’s lips twisted instead of finishing his thought. “Well, what about you? Who’s _ your _ best best friend?”

“Bill, obviously.”

He rolled his eyes with a nod “Right. Bill.”

“Yeah.” He stuck his hands in his pockets.

Eddie scoffed under his breath, kicking a pebble down the sidewalk.

Richie knocked his shoulder against his to get his attention. When he looked up, Richie winked. And Eddie smiled, this small, quick quirk of his lips that he only ever gave to Richie.

Richie didn’t argue with Bill after that.

“So you don’t need to come up this weekend,” Eddie’s saying, forcibly casual. 

Richie’s listening, but not understanding. He tucks the finished essay into a folder and starts looking for the phone number of the freshman he’d written it for. “I don’t _ need _ to floss either, and yet—”

“You _ do _ need to floss, and I know for a fact you don’t.”

“Therefore, ergo, and furthermore, I will be seeing you this weekend,” Richie tells him. “Colby tell you about any sweet parties happening?”

“Huh? Um, nope. So you can just stay home.”

He’s such a bad fucking liar.

“No worries,” Richie assures him. “I’m still coming. Don’t cha miss me?” He wastes a winning grin on the phone, but he can’t help it. He hasn’t seen Eddie in like a month.

He lets out this scoff and mutters, “I mean, maybe, I guess.”

“Oh?” Richie’s ears perk up. “What’s that? You yearn for the tender warmth of my embrace? You can barely go another day without the sight of my beloved face before your own?”

“I didn’t say _ any _ of that. Maybe you need hearing aids to match your glasses.”

“Great, so I’ll get there right after your stats class finishes. See you then!” He hangs up before Eddie can argue, and calls up the guy who’s about to give him the money to afford the trip.

Richie ends up arriving significantly past the end time of Eddie’s stats class, but he became in desperate needs of supplies on the way to Eddie’s dorm.

“This isn’t healthy,” Eddie says when Richie pulls pop and two bottles of rum from his bag.

“Didn’t I tell you I’m moderating now? I haven’t had real liquor in months,” Richie brags.

He picks up a rum bottle and pulls a face. “What do you consider _ not _-real liquor?”

Richie snatches it back. “Beer and wine.”

He hums judgmentally.

“Hey, beer is basically pop. My dad drank beer with his dinner all the time.”

“And your mom?”

“She doesn’t drink.” 

Eddie’s lips twist, because the addition of ‘anymore’ to Richie’s reply hangs like an elephant in the room, and it’s exactly why Eddie asked his question.

“Listen, one night’s not gonna kill me,” Richie says. “Seriously, I haven’t gotten drunk in weeks. It’s been so boring.”

“It’s not gonna be any less boring getting shitfaced and passing out in my room.”

“I know.” He grabs him by the shoulders. “That’s why we’re going to a party.”

“Pardon?”

“Ran into Colby on campus.” He grins, giving him a shake. Eddie tilts his head back with a groan. “You’re a fucking liar, he invited you to a party going down _ tonight_.”

Eddie flings himself onto his bed with the resignation of a felon being put in cuffs. “Richie—”

“Now, I will take an apology for lying to me, your best friend, in the form of you putting something cute on and coming to this party with me.”

He pouts, plucking at his cotton candy-coloured polo shirt. “Isn’t this cute—no.” He shakes his head. “Nevermind, I’m a grown man, I’m not putting anything _ cute _ on. And I’m not going to this party!”

Richie pops his brows and takes a swig of rum. “Are you sure about that?”

“Richie, what the fuck, it’s like five in the afternoon.” 

Which he only says because he gets sleepy two hours into drinking. He doesn’t do St. Patrick’s Day, Homecoming, the Superbowl, or any other excuse to drink all day long. Richie’s got the experience. Not that that’s anything to brag about, but here he is anyway.

“And we don’t leave until like eleven, so you’ve got plenty of time to find something cute.”

There’s a long, winding scenic route conversation before Eddie agrees to go to the party, but Richie gets him there. He always does.

Eddie ends up in a different pastel polo, after trying on a dozen outfits while arguing with himself and Richie on whether or not he was actually going to go. Richie’s in a faded band tee under a crumbling leather jacket he bought for five bucks at a thrift store. 

Richie thinks they look pretty sweet.

Eddie is complaining. “But is this a leather jacket type of party? Why did you let me wear a polo?”

They can’t be more than a block away now, far too late to change his mind. 

“Because you didn’t want to borrow any of my cool shirts,” Richie reminds him.

“They all had sweat stains, Richie.”

“It’s because I haven’t done laundry in a month. It’s a stupid chore and I hate it.”

“Your life is my nightmare.”

Richie laughs.

He’d gotten through half a bottle of rum, and he’d made Eddie take two shots before they left, which is just enough to get Eddie clingy, and Richie well on his way to buzzed.

Richie stops and squints at the numbers on the house in front of them. “Is this it?”

The address is in an older part of town, with sidewalks cracked from roots of tall old trees. The house towers above them, with roof spires that look Victorian. If the white paint weren’t peeling and shingles falling off, it probably would’ve been an expensive piece of property.

Richie suppresses any reservations suddenly popping up, and elbows Eddie in the ribs. “Looks alright, eh?”

“It looks like it’ll collapse from one good Nirvana guitar riff.”

Eddie still joins Richie as he heads up the walkway. The front door’s locked, broken maybe, with a sign pointing to a basement entrance. They follow it, and trepidation tickles Richie’s spine despite himself.

Eddie’s hand glides down Richie’s forearm to clasp his wrist. The flickering light above the door only serves to cast shadows across the twisted, overgrown bushes, leaving the rest of the lawn shadowed in darkness.

“See, I told you Colby was too nice,” Eddie says, on the same bleak page as Richie. “He invited the weird kids here to kill them!”

Richie grabs the mickey from the inside of his jacket. Eddie’s nails dig into his arm as he takes a sip. 

This is stupid. If Richie were alone he’d walk right in. He wouldn’t notice the cobwebs, or the mould creeping up the basement cinder blocks. He’d zoom right on into a party with no windows, because it wasn’t so much the dark he was scared of, but being _ alone _ in the dark, and inside the party he wouldn’t be alone.

But with Eddie clinging to his arm, working up to hyperventilating in his ear—it sends him back. He can hear his friends screaming, his own heart pounding while he fought the bone-deep certainty that they wouldn’t make it past the stupid clown mocking everything they held dear.

The basement door bangs open, releasing the pounding interior music with a pop. 

Richie doesn’t jump, just stares in shock at the two young women stumbling out, laughing and hanging off each other.

They stop when they see Richie and Eddie, and the girls share a look.

“Are you going in?” one of them says. Her hair’s held back by butterfly clips and her chest sparkles with silver glitter.

“Yeah?”

She narrows her eyes, half-blocking the doorway. Through it, colourful lights flash, illuminating a large crowd pulsing in the otherwise dark space. “Are you cool?” 

“_Cool _?” Eddie repeats incredulously.

“Yeah. Are you cool?” She holds the word so long her lips pucker, and Richie’s pretty sure she’s high.

Richie would also like to be high. “Colby invited us?”

“Oh! Colby!” Her expression clears and she knocks her hip against the other girl’s, and they step aside to wave them in. “Then go right on ahead.”

“Thanks?”

They wander off in fit of shrieking giggles. Definitely laughing _ at _ him, but he’s beyond worrying about that.

Richie squeezes the nape of Eddie’s neck and marches them both in there. This is stupid, it’s a party; they’re not gonna die.

As soon as they’re through the door, Richie realizes his mistake.

The flashing lights are neon and black light. A DJ is cranking out house music from an unseen point in the room. Party goers are minimally clad in leather and neon fishnets and clear plastic shirts as they writhe to the beat. A few feet away, two guys are smeared with glow-in-the-dark paint and curled toward each other like a heart, faces a breath apart.

“This is a rave,” Eddie accuses, teeth nipping Richie’s ear. “You brought me to a _ rave_.”

Richie rips his gaze away from the couple, almost takes another swig of rum but knows it won’t quench his suddenly parched throat. “No, raves are in abandoned warehouses. This is a basement.”

Eddie shoves him. “You brought me to a _ basement _ rave!”

Then he yanks Richie back by the collar and steals the mickey out of his jacket.

As he’s furiously chugging, Colby bounds up to them. Hanging sideways off his head is a neon pink snapback. “Dudes! You made it!”

“This is a rave!” Eddie spits, jerking the open mickey at him.

Richie hurries to take it back. “Don’t spill it, don’t spill it.”

Eddie shakes his head, eyeing the floor stains that glow white in the black light. “This is worse than Derry’s sewers, Richie.”

That almost gets him sprinting out of there. “No it’s not!”

Colby doesn’t notice their rising panic. He jerks his chin at Eddie’s waist. “I see you’ve brought your party fanny pack tonight.”

Richie pats it. “He’s got condoms in there if things spice up.”

“And bandaids, and polysporin and a thermometer, you don’t need to open with condoms, Jesus, Richie—”

“Alright, we got a medic on deck,” Colby says amiably. “Sick.”

“I am _ not _ on deck!” Eddie argues, and for once his yelling is necessary since the music is nearly drowning them out. “Why would you invite me to this? You know I have a germ thing!”

Colby lifts his hands in surrender. “Dude, I’m sorry. There’s a porch out back if you wanna catch your breath.” He pops his brows. “Maybe calm down with some extra curriculars...?”

Richie grins in relief. “None for my friend here, but I’ll kindly partake.”

He follows Colby through the crowd, Eddie clinging to his arm. “You don’t know what’s in their marijuana, Richie! I watched a Dateline where it got laced with methamphetamines!”

“Then I guess I’ll do some meth.”

Eddie slaps his chest.

They make it to a concrete patio with a wooden fence closing in the modest backyard. Flat benches line the wall of the house, there’s a patio table and chairs, and maybe a dozen people milling outside with drinks and smokes in hand.

“You will not do meth!” Eddie says, still shouting despite the quieter space outside.

Colby frowns at them. “I’ve just got weed. There’s, like, acid in the other corner if you want some, but I don’t think there’s any meth.”

“Oh, good, there’s an _ acid _ corner,” Eddie says, steaming out the ears.

Richie nods in determination. “Can you give us a sec, Colby?”

“Take _ all _ the time you need, man.”

Richie pulls Eddie further into the backyard, but not to a corner, because he can’t discern which one is supposed to be for acid.

He ducks to meet Eddie’s eyes, which are stormed with worry. “Hey. Do you wanna go home?”

Eddie’s chest is still heaving. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Always. But seriously, if you’re gonna be a downer this whole time, we can just leave and do something where you won’t be miserable.”

“Don’t blame me for being a downer.” His words are razor-sharp. “This is so far from what I agreed to—”

“Spaghetti.” He squeezes his shoulders. “I _ know _.”

Richie had Eddie mentally prepared for a house party, not this club scene rave thing. It’s a whole different ball game, and if Eddie’s gonna stay uncomfortable, then there’s no point wasting their time here.

“Can you take a deep breath for me?” Richie says. He prays Eddie’s not gonna whip out his inhaler.

He doesn’t. He just breathes as requested. A few times. His shoulders stop shaking under Richie’s palms.

“We can go,” Richie says easily. “I don’t give a shit. I came here to see you, not a bunch of strangers.”

Eddie ducks his head, scuffing his shoe on the grass. “But you wanna stay.”

“Not if you don’t wanna. And Eds—I can _ make _ you have fun, but only if I’m not forcing you to stick around.”

Eddie lifts a brow. “You can _ make _ me have fun?”

Richie grins at him. “I’m a fucking delight and you know it. So are we staying or not?”

He scopes out the yard, and Richie does as well, with his Eddie-vision this time. Outside is better than inside the structurally-questionable house, even though second hand smoke is a risk out here. He doesn’t see any glass or used needles in the grass, and the porch light illuminates the paved area near the back door well enough.

“It seems okay out here,” Eddie says slowly. “But if someone offers me acid, I’m leaving.”

Richie laughs. “Deal. Now I need you to do one more thing.”

“Okay?”

Richie hands him the mickey. “Take another shot of this.” Eddie drinks and Richie taps the bottom going, “That’s right, a nice big boy sip.” Eddie glares at him. “There ya go.”

Eddie winces as he gives the mickey back to him. “That shit’s awful.”

He gets an arm around him. “It’s supposed to be, Eds.”

They return to Colby, sitting on the long bench against the back wall, chatting to some girl next to him. He looks up at them. “Everything cool?”

“The coolest.” Richie sits next to him, and Eddie joins.

“Awesome.” To Eddie, Colby says, “Sorry, dude, hindsight’s 20/20, you know? The rest of the stuff I invited you to was way more chill.”

“I’m not sure I trust your interpretation of ‘chill’,” Eddie replies, “but don’t worry about it. I’m gonna drink a lot of rum and use a lot of hand sanitizer and I’m gonna have a nice time.”

“A nice time!” Richie repeats with a grin. “How ‘bout we get that started with some extra curriculars?”

Colby produces a blunt from his pocket, and Richie pulls out a lighter.

Eddie never drinks too much, because he’s scared of… everything, but he’ll get tipsy.

The differences between Eddie tipsy and Eddie sober are slight, but extremely significant. There’s the clinginess, of course. Barely a moment passes over the next two hours where one of their body parts aren’t touching. Secondly, he’s even louder, and a little sloppier. He accidentally slaps Richie in the face several times in the process of an excited rant. And it’s like the first layer of his anxiety melts away, so he’s willing to indulge most of Colby’s friends who come round. He clearly knows some of them already.

An Asian girl toasts the air with her wine cooler and says, “Never have I ever interrupted a professor in the middle of their lecture to argue about airborne pathogens.”

Eddie groans, taking the mickey out of Richie’s hand for another sip. “That was _ one _ time!” He holds out a finger to support his point.

“You were at it for fifteen minutes,” some guy complains.

Eddie narrows his eyes at him. “Well, never have I ever went to a new class for a whole week before realizing I’ve been going to the wrong room, _ Kevin_.”

“I already said that one, Eddie,” a red-haired girl laughs. “Pick a different target.”

Eddie huffs, but then his attention lands on Richie. Richie, who had simply been enjoying Eddie interact so comfortably with his classmates. 

Eddie smirks. Richie prepares himself, because Eddie has so much on him, so many easy ways to make him drink, but what he says is, “Never have I ever fucked my friend’s mother.”

Someone in the circle actually drinks, which Eddie doesn’t seem to notice. Richie doesn’t reach for the rum in Eddie’s hand.

“Oh, well then!” Eddie says, wobbling a little as he crosses one leg over the other. “The truth finally comes out, I see! Mayhaps we can put that joke to rest, hm?”

“No, Eddie, I didn’t fuck your mom.” Richie lays a hand over his heart. “We made love.”

The others laugh, and the red-haired girl across from them leans forward with big eyes. “Did you actually have sex with his mom?”

Richie takes a hit and says, “Yeah” the same time Eddie snaps, “Of course not.”

The girl giggles at Eddie. “You’re cute.”

Richie’s stomach does a weird _ floop _ in response to the smile she’s giving him. 

Eddie doesn’t seem to know what to do with the attention either. After a moment, he crosses his arms, leaning into Richie, and says, “Thanks, I get it from my mom.”

Richie chokes on incredulous laughter. “Dude, no you _ don’t._”

“Shut up, Richie!”

Only a screen door separates the party from the backyard, so they still get a soundtrack. Across the lawn, people are taking advantage of the music by grinding in the open air.

“Christ,” Eddie mutters. “We’re one spit—one _ split _ seam away from an orgy.”

“Then you could make use of those condoms,” Colby says with a shit-eating grin.

“And wouldn’t that be fun?” Richie replies under his breath, eyes on the dancers making the most of their night. He knows there’s no way, but he wonders if there’s any string of words that could convince Eddie to go over there with him.

Eddie, apparently, decides Richie doesn’t need to watch them, because he plucks his glasses off his face and puts them on instead. 

His glare at Colby is twice as intense behind Richie’s thick lenses. “Anyone can have a condom, as long as I in no way see them being used.”

“I would like to see anything at all,” Richie muses.

Eddie blinks owlishly at Richie. He thinks, at least. Everything’s dark and blurry now. “What’s stopping you?”

“You’re wearing my glasses, dipshit.”

“Oh.” Eddie looks up at the sky for some reason. “You’re blinder than ever, dude.”

Richie paws a hand in Colby’s general direction. “My glaucoma,” he says in an old woman voice. “I need it for my glaucoma.”

Colby laughs and passes him a lit joint. “Eddie, you sure you don’t want any?”

Richie shakes his head and answers for him. “My boy smoked _ once _. It’s not good for him.”

“What happened?”

Before Richie can open his mouth, Eddie lurches dramatically to grab his arm. “_Don’t_.”

“Don’t what?” Richie says.

“Don’t tell the story.”

“Which story?” 

“When I got high.”

“Oh, and you cried about baby carrots getting stolen from their parents?”

Colby bursts out laughing.

Eddie socks Richie in the armpit. His aim was probably his shoulder. “You’re an idiot.”

“Ow.” Richie pouts. “That hurts. Kiss it better.”

“No, you deserved that.”

Richie crowds in close and leans his head on Eddie’s shoulder, because all he wants is to be as close to him as possible. “You’re mean.”

“You guys are a riot, man,” Colby says. 

Richie rejoices. “We’ve finally found someone with some culture.”

Eddie looks down at him, his face an unclear sea of dark eyes and a frown. “Wait, why can’t I see?”

Richie takes his glasses back. “_You’re _ an idiot.”

A party guest slices their finger on a rusty nail on the patio table. Eddie’s over there in a flash, spilling half the contents of his fanny pack across the table to a drunk but impressed crowd. He’s running his mouth, throwing his arms wide. Richie’s too far away to hear Eddie’s words slur together as he talks faster than his tipsy ass can keep up with, but he can tell it’s a barely comprehensible version of his tetanus speech.

Richie leans against the wall, ribs feeling cold sans Eddie, and takes the blunt Colby offers.

“So, how long have you two been,” Colby pauses, “friends?”

Richie licks his lips. Even high off his ass, he recognizes the leading question.

Maybe Colby’s noticed the incongruity; that Richie keeps spouting how he wants to meet hot babes, yet is glued to Eddie’s side. But this inebriated, and with none of the losers around to keep an eye on Eddie, he can’t make himself act any different. He’s tied to Eddie, for so many reasons, but the one he’ll give if anybody asks is that Richie dragged him here, so he had to make sure Eddie’s enjoying himself.

He takes a hit. “Since we were kids.”

“Aw, yeah, I see that,” Colby says. He’s a chill guy. Hot. He’s let a few girls lead him inside for a dance, but he says he gets too sweaty to stay in there for long. Whenever he returns, he beelines it to chat with another hot guy, who’s currently sitting at the table Eddie is playing paramedic at.

“You friends with him?” Richie points.

Colby grins, moonlight making his teeth shine. “I’m trying to be, you get me?”

Richie’s chest flushes. “Yeah, bro.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue, to explain that Richie and Eddie aren’t like that, they don’t do that—not anymore. And it was never anything in the first place. 

But to express such a concept firmly, when the subject matter that’s out in the open is so flimsy to begin with—it makes Richie dizzy trying to to start a sentence with that much subtext.

Eddie flounces back to them, and for some reason Richie expects him to sit on his lap, so when he plops onto the bench instead, his chest clenches with an incredible longing that hadn’t even been there a second ago.

Has Eddie noticed the subtext floating around this party? Does he experience the same paradoxical mix of ease and nerves thinking about what it means?

Sweat pricks Richie’s neck, and he passes the blunt back to Colby. “I think that’s enough for me tonight.”

“Good,” Eddie says too loudly, right in his ear. He lays his hands on Richie’s face, and Richie tries to close his eyes to enjoy it, but Eddie pushes his glasses up and pries his eyelids open with his fingers. “God, your pupils are huge.”

“They match my dick.” 

His roommate Lucas takes a programming class, and he explained to Richie once about auto reactions in code. You can tell a program to respond the same way to set data every time it’s presented. Richie felt like a computer sometimes. Input <big, huge, massive>; output <dick joke>. It’s not even clever.

Eddie sets his glasses back in place. “I think we should go.”

“Where?”

“Back to my dorm. I can’t carry you if you fall asleep here.”

“I think you can try.”

“How about I get him some water first?” Colby offers. “Dude looks wobbly just sitting down.”

Eddie agrees and Colby disappears inside.

Richie rests his cheek on top of Eddie’s head and closes his eyes. “Did you have a good time?”

“Uh huh.” Eddie trails a finger down Richie’s forearm before tracing his palm lines. Richie shivers. “Sorry we didn’t actually, like, _ go _ to a party.”

“What?”

“We were outside the whole time.”

Richie scoffs. The next word out of his mouth is almost ‘babe’ for some godforsaken reason, but he saves it. “Ba—_ buddy _. Buddy, the best part of any party with people you actually like is sitting outside so you can talk. I had a great time.”

Colby returns an undetermined amount of time later and Richie chugs the water bottle given to him. He’s not sure how that was supposed to help.

Suddenly he’s standing, with Eddie’s arm wrapped around his waist. He’s awkwardly thanking Colby for inviting them.

“Um yeah, this was—it sure was something.” Eddie stumbles as he tries to walk them away.

Richie’s eyes are still closed. He opens them. “Colby, dude! This was amazing, I’ll get Eddie to tell you when I’ll be around again so we can do it all over.”

“Yeah, for sure.” They bro hug, with Eddie keeping a hand on Richie’s waist to steady him.

“Keep an eye on my guy until then, okay?” Richie says to Colby.

“Yeah, but who’s keeping an eye on you?”

All Richie can do is laugh in response.

The rest of the party goers they’d been chatting with all wave goodbye, and then the two of them head through the house to leave. 

A banger comes on as they’re walking and Richie’s hips can’t help but swing to the beat. Eddie’s hip bumps, uncoordinated, back into his. 

Richie ropes his arms around Eddie and drops his forehead against his. Sweat smears against their skin, and Eddie must _ hate _ that. Must hate the floor’s stickiness that makes each step slower than the last. Must hate strangers’ bodies bumping against his back. Richie pulls him closer, keeping him safe in the ring of his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, right on Eddie’s face. For a moment, he imagines free-falling into the depths of Eddie’s eyes.

“For what?”

“This place. You hate it.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.” 

He somehow gets even closer to Richie’s face. “Don’t tell me how I feel, asshole.”

Richie grins. His hands splay across his back. “You feel warm.”

He feels more than hears Eddie’s soft gasp. “If I—if I get a fever—”

Richie’s still smiling when their lips align, slipping wetly against each other. A groan rips up Richie’s throat, though it easily could’ve come from the pulsing music enclosing them. Eddie feels so fucking good like this—on his mouth, under his roaming hands. Eddie’s fingers in Richie’s hair, his tongue curling into his mouth. Longing fills Richie, back-logged from years of not letting himself even _ think _ about drawing Eddie in, of sharing sighs and spit. 

Richie shuffles his feet to get closer, impatient and needy, but their chests are already plastered together. The only thing on his mind is getting as close as possible to the friend he’s missed so much that it’s like a part of him was missing, like he’s been reaching for his right arm but it wasn’t there because Eddie was in a different city. But now he’s here, he’s _ here _, and Richie can taste him. Eddie Spaghetti.

“Eddie?” Richie says roughly. 

His bottom lips pops off his. “_ Rich _.” 

He swallows. “I’m hungry.”

“Huh?”

“I want noodles,” he says. “Or a burger.”

A little gasp puffs against Richie’s cheek. “Fries. Fries would be amazing right now.”

“Chili fries!”

Eddie grabs his biceps. “We gotta go get chili fries right now.”

“Yes!”

Eddie spins on his heel, Richie slaps him on the ass, and then they’re outta there.

When they were kids, Richie couldn’t comprehend how two boys kissing was so inherently threatening, so grotesque, so worthy of vitriol and hate that presidents based campaigns off it, that people were killed and dying over it. But he could ask anybody and get the same response—not that he’d ever have to ask. The message was blindingly clear.

So he wasn’t what the bullies shouted at him, what they wrote on his locker, what girls whispered under their breath while he yelled at the top of his lungs about pussy. 

He wasn’t _ that _, because he didn’t wanna get murdered.

But he was still kissing Eddie. Recklessly, and stupidly, with no end in sight.

His heart was a dangerous, beating creature in his chest threatening to cast his life into ruins. 

Eddie was his safe place.

Bullies would push him and break his glasses, and Eddie was there to pick him up and give him tape. Richie burned the mac and cheese when his parents weren’t home, Eddie would come over with a PB&J. He got hit in the face for his big mouth, Eddie would clean up his split bottom lip and kiss him on the cheek.

So when that fucking clown came, he got a two for one with Richie. Because yeah, he was afraid of the corner of himself that he refused to acknowledge, and his punishment if it ever came to light, but he’d never been scared of his friends dying. Why would he need to worry about that? They were kids. (It was summer!)

And he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live in a world without Eddie, so why would anyone want to hurt him? 

Seeing Eddie’s life hang in the balance so many times bloomed a new fear in Richie’s heart, crystallizing and sticking like tree sap. How would he live with himself, if he let Eddie die? What if he _ caused _ it? 

Losing Eddie scared him more than dying himself.

So he gave up that kissing nonsense. There was no point to it—because he refused to consider why it meant _ so much— _so testing fate by kissing an inch away from calamity did nothing but put Eddie in danger. 

Eddie never asked about it. Maybe he’d come to the same conclusion. Maybe if Richie tried to steal a cheeky kiss again, Eddie would stick his hand out to deny him. 

At least he stopped before Eddie said no. Because if he tried and Eddie didn’t want to, then Richie would have to confront why, exactly, he wanted to kiss his best friend so bad in the first place.

He saved himself that horror, and kept Eddie safe. 

And Richie’s heart beat on like a wounded animal.

They stumble down the sidewalk in the vague direction of Eddie’s dorm. Each line of Richie’s thoughts are tied to the next so tenuously as to be incomprehensible.

“And your mom’s not around.” Richie grabs a conversational thread connected to reminiscing about staying out late in high school and always needing to sneak Eddie back into his room. Now they can stay out as late as they want without the fear of god Mrs. Kaspbrak put into them. “What’s that like?”

“It’s weird,” Eddie says.

“Weird?”

Eddie tilts his head back against Richie’s arm around his shoulder, so Richie focuses on keeping them walking in a straight line. “Like I’ve been pushing back against a wall for so long and now it’s not there and I’m, like, falling. You know?”

Richie nods like he understands. “No. Is that good or bad?”

His hand clenches in the back of Richie’s shirt. “I miss you guys. You know—you know we’re never gonna see each other as much as we did in high school? And that sucks! Because high school _ sucked _! But I miss it.”

“Dude, you’re gonna make me cry.”

“Sorry.”

“Gimme a piggy back ride.”

“Okay.”

Richie clambers onto Eddie’s back, and he swears he falls asleep until Eddie slides him back to his feet.

“Are we home?” Richie mumbles.

“No, you’re heavy.” They’ve gone maybe a block.

Richie’s looking for some buzzing neon lights that will indicate fast food is near. He replies with, “Just more of me to love.” 

It’s one of the many quips programmed to fall out of his mouth on autopilot. 

He gets through whole conversations with stock phrases while he’s preoccupied, and then people—usually his mom—get pissed when he doesn’t remember what they talked about. If they wanted to be remembered, they should’ve been more interesting. 

“Have you dated anyone?” Like that. Eddie’s is the type of question that will throw him off and force him to pay attention.

The thing is, most of the girls he’s met are cool, and they don’t hate him—at least not on sight like in Derry—and it’s easy to find a make out partner when you’re under the influence. So he’s done that.

But girls will only find him funny for so long, until he fucks it up with something offensive and they grimace and leave him alone. More importantly, there’s no spark. At parties it’s just bodies, and in real life they’re, like, human people that he has trouble connecting to anyway.

Not that Richie’s going to admit any of that.

His tongue feels heavy, so he skips his usual macho posturing. Eddie knows him too well, anyway. “No. I mean, a few dates—singular. Nothing… sticks.”

He doesn’t ask Eddie the same. He hopes he still knows him too well, too.

Eddie nods, seemingly satisfied.

They keep walking, and Richie finally catches sight of blazing neon. He crashes through a bush to get to the restaurant, but trips on his way there.

A foot away from his face, big red shoes rise from the overgrown grass. Dread grows in his stomach as he lifts his head to see the puffy polka-dotted outfit, the stone white skin, the curly hair, the round red nose.

His heart stutters to a stop.

Richie yelps and punches its shin on instinct. He scrambles to his feet and then Eddie’s falling through the bush too, and they’re both kicking the shit out of this clown.

It lights up, almost blinding him. 

A voice from a distance shouts, “What the fuck are you kids doing?”

Richie blinks.

The dead-eyed stare of this clown is pointing at the drive-thru of this burger place, as it always had and always would, because it’s a statue.

“I’m calling the cops if you don’t fuck off,” yells an employee hanging out the front door of the restaurant.

Eddie grabs Richie’s hand. “Let’s go!”

They tear down the sidewalk, arms pumping as one.

When they get back to Eddie’s room, Richie’s reminded of the annoying convenience of two beds. It doesn’t matter immediately, because Eddie doesn’t let Richie sit down until he takes a shower. 

“You’re not falling asleep with rave gunk all over you.”

“You gonna help me wash my dick, Eddie my guy?” Richie asks, stumbling, as Eddie pushes him into his bathroom.

“Shut up. Just don’t drown.”

So Richie takes what is by far the highest shower of his life, and Eddie goes in after him, and all Richie’s able to do is pull on a fresh pair of boxers before he passes out in Eddie’s bed. 

Some time later, his ribs are getting poked by bony elbows as Eddie crawls onto the mattress with him.

“There’s a spare over _ there _, dick face,” he grumbles. “I put on fresh sheets and everything.”

“’S so nice.” Richie flips over and hugs him to his chest. “You’re gonna make such a good wife one day.”

“I hate you,” Eddie says, but the tension that his body holds taut like a rubber band melts away as Richie rubs his back nice and slow.

“Mm hm,” Richie hums, and drifts back to sleep with Eddie solid and warm in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)))) lemme know why you think this is my favourite chapter ;) But really, tell me your favourite part!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! Thanks so much for your feedback! I'm one glass into a Bailey's and eggnog already, so we'll just get right into it!  
Tw: internalized homophobia, homophobic assault (in a flashback, not against any canon characters), and mention of vomiting.

The next morning, Richie’s back is tucked against a furnace, or something similarly warm, because he lurches into wakefulness when it’s pulled away, and he’s left coldly awake with the discomfort of a pulsing headache and dry mouth. 

Richie groans at being woken up even a little.

“Shh.” It’s Eddie, and it’s his hand brushing sweat-plastered hair off Richie’s forehead. “Go back to sleep.”

So he does, because Eddie pulls the blanket up to mimic the warmth he’s taking with him.

Some time later, Richie awakes again, feeling less tired but still like a hungover pile of trash.

Eddie’s fresh out of another shower in just a pair of sweats while he folds Richie’s clothes from last night. Richie groans and buries his head in the pillow. Looking at Eddie right now is like staring straight into the sun, even without his glasses. 

Eddie gives him Advil and water.

“Saint, you’re a saint,” Richie croaks as he peels his body off sweaty sheets. 

Eddie turns back to cleaning the modest mess Richie made of his room and replies dryly, “I’m not sure offering drugs to drunkards is the way to sainthood.”

“’M not a drunkard,” he mumbles, swallowing the pills and the full glass of water in one gulp. He slumps back to lying down, stomach rumbling. “Did we even make it to food last night?”

Eddie tosses a look at him over his shoulder, but turns back to cleaning up. “You don’t remember?”

“Yeah, haha,” Richie says sarcastically. “I got drunk and forgot half the night. We had a good time, though, right?”

Eddie hums non-committally.

Memories are slipping back to him in bits and pieces. Parts of the night have already been lost forever, he’s sure. 

Some bits have stuck, though. Richie frowns at his bruised knuckles. “Why do I remember fighting a clown?”

Eddie heaves a huge sigh. He sounds resigned. “Because we beat up a drive thru sign. I’m never drinking with you again.”

“Don’t make promises I won’t let you keep.” Richie contemplates getting out of bed, but standing on his own feels like a daunting task. He flops back on the pillows. “What’s for breakfast?”

“I’ve got a meal pass. Can you walk?”

He groans. “Gimme twenty minutes.”

They leave half an hour later, and in the dining hall they run into some of Eddie’s bleary-eyed classmates that they’d hung out with last night. They sit with Eddie’s new friends, who are as welcoming as hungover college students can possibly be.

Richie lays his head on the table and pops a hash brown into his mouth one piece at a time.

“That’s disgusting, Richie. I’ve seen what they clean these tables with, and it’s not regulation.”

Richie grunts and drinks orange juice through a straw.

“You just gotta drink a lot of water before you sleep,” a girl across the table says. She’s the one who called Eddie cute. “Then you won’t get hungover. Did you drink water?”

Richie casts a baleful eye at Eddie. “Why didn’t you tell me to drink water, Eddie?”

“You had an entire bottle of water before we left the party,” Eddie replies. “And hydration won’t help you after doing four weed joints.”

Laughter bubbles out of Richie, followed by the others at the table.

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie says to them all. “Sorry I don’t know the proper terminology for killing off brain cells.”

“No, you’re right,” the girl pacifies him, still giggling. “Four weed joints is a lot.”

Eddie pouts, prompting Richie to stare at his mouth, which is not an altogether uncommon impulse, but this time there’s a tickling at the back of his mind. He knows, faintly, what Eddie’s lips feel like. But now the memory pulls much stronger at him, as if the last time he’d kissed Eddie hadn’t been years ago.

Richie buries his head into his arm trying to figure it out. Why does he know what Eddie’s tongue flavoured with rum tastes like?

He shoots straight up in his chair.

They kissed last _ night _. 

The table’s attention is immediately drawn to his sudden movement.

It hits him like a bucket of ice water—that they made out, in public, at a seedy basement rave.

The girl takes a burbling sip of her chocolate milk. “You alright?”

Eddie says nothing, just lays a hand over Richie’s wrist, accompanied by the tiniest scrunch of his brows. He’s ready to get him out of there in two seconds if something from that summer has set him off.

In that moment, Richie gets lost in the patience of Eddie’s face, and the feelings from back then crash into him like a wave. The wonder of kissing Eddie, and Eddie kissing him _ back _ . The anticipation when they snuck off alone, giggling and sharing glances like they were getting away with something incredible. The messy swirling guilt for making a habit of something they shouldn’t do—like really, _ really _ shouldn’t do, not like swearing in the street or hitting on young female teachers—because if somebody caught them, it would’ve been the end of them.

And Richie went and did it front of dozens of people.

“Richie?” Eddie says when all Richie does is stare at him.

Which jerks him back to reality. They’d made it out unbothered. These people who were at the party haven’t asked about it. And—there were guys _ together _ there, which was the only reason Richie was emboldened enough to pull that shit in the first place. And it was dark, maybe nobody saw anything. 

“Sorry,” Richie tries to recover. “I think I’m still high.”

The others laugh, but Eddie’s forehead crease deepens.

Richie pokes Eddie’s nose. “Beep beep, Eds.”

Eddie rolls his eyes.

Richie tries to forget it all just like the first time.

They hang out the rest of the weekend like normal and it’s fine. Richie sleeps in the spare bed without staring at Eddie’s sleeping form across the room and it’s fine. Eddie hugs him goodbye at the train station and Richie can feel his heart beating against Eddie’s behind his ribcage and it’s fine.

It’s fine that Richie forgot his fucking walkman at Eddie’s and now he can’t sit still on the train, finally alone with his thoughts. The silence offers no distractions from the one memory stuck on repeat. Eddie swaying gently to an erratic beat, pale polo glowing under the black light, gaze bright and fiery as Richie leaned in—or had Eddie leaned in? Had they both gone in?

They’d both been _ into _ it. On the train, Richie ducks his head between his legs, gripping his hair in a facsimile of Eddie fingers twisting through his curls. Eddie stretching up on his toes, pressing their chests together. The throaty way Eddie spoke his name— _ Rich _.

Richie goes light-headed.

Then they left. For food they didn’t get. Eddie gave Richie a piggy back ride. Richie crawled into Eddie’s bed instead of the spare, and Eddie elbowed his way into sharing it. Stayed in his arms until morning.

“Shit, _ shit. _” Richie’s voice cracks. He leans back in his seat, struggling to control his breathing.

The phantom warmth of Eddie lingers on his chest, his shaking hands, his lips.

This is bad, this is so bad.

He needs a drink, but he left the unfinished rum with Eddie for next time. Next time! Fuck, how is he ever gonna be able to look at Eddie normally again?

But he’s gonna have to. Because Eddie…

What does it _ mean _ that Eddie acted like they’ve never kissed? Never ever? Not when they were kids, and not this weekend?

Of course, it’s almost too easy of a question—he’s ashamed. The same shame creeps up Richie’s throat, clearer and hotter than when they were kids because he understands more now, he’s smarter. He’s heard what people say, and watched the news, and he knows, he _ knows _ that that kiss in public could’ve been the last thing they ever did.

He rubs at his eyes under his glasses. He knows what anybody who’d seen them would’ve thought. So he should be repulsed, and horrified, and vow to never do it again, but—he liked it just as much as last time. Maybe even more now, with a handful drunken make outs with girls to compare it to.

And the fact that he likes it so much—that he can’t stop thinking about it, ruminating on the memory like a puff of smoke held in his mouth… 

He needs a fucking smoke, that’s for sure.

Can he smoke on the train? God, grant him small mercies.

He takes off looking for a smoking car. There must be one. 

He’d kind of rather have weed than the cigarettes in his jacket, but he hasn’t forgotten his hangover from yesterday, so he’s probably better off.

He spends most of the ride in the last car, designated as the smoking car by the one guy in there already smoking.

Richie burns through the rest of his pack trying to lower his heart rate and give his hands something to do other than tug at his hair. He overdoes it, obviously. Ends up dry heaving into a plastic bag.

Fuck, maybe his dad should’ve made him smoke a whole pack at once like he’d always threatened to. By the end of the train ride, Richie can’t handle even the residual smell of smoke clinging in the air. He goes back to his original seat for the last ten excruciating minutes of his train ride and focuses on the smoke-induced nausea instead of anything else.

Richie gets home and he can’t think. Well, he _ can _—that’s the problem. He doesn’t want to. He could drink alone. He could get high with Lucas. He could go for a fucking run like Eddie does.

He really might go for a run. He still feels kinda sick from his debut as a chimney impersonator on the train, so his normal ways of fending off panic aren’t looking too appealing.

Fuck it, he still has his bike. It’s not winter yet, no snow on the ground. He’ll ride until he falls off and then pass out.

He’s doing some stretches in the front yard because he cannot sit the fuck still when Clara and Jordan come up the front walkway. He’s got an arm around her shoulder, so she’s right in his armpit. It looks uncomfortable. Richie and Eddie fit together better than them.

He gives himself a good shake and picks his bike off the ground.

“Are you—” Clara starts. Stops. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing?” Richie tries.

“I thought you hated riding that thing.” Jordan nods at the bike.

“I love my bike,” Richie corrects. “I hate my bike in New York.”

“You’re still in New York,” Clara says.

“And?” He’s bouncing. He wishes he had his walkman.

Clara narrows her eyes. “Are you _ on _ something?”

Richie scoffs and hops on his bike. “I wish. If I’m not back by morning, call the cops, I’m probably splattered across a taxi.”

He speeds past Clara’s, “How the fuck long are you gonna be riding that thing?” and takes off like he’s in flight.

So it’s not winter, but it’s close. It’s not that late, but the sun is long gone and the streets will be dark for hours. There’s no snow, but the wind bites at his face and shoots down his throat like spearmint mouthwash. It’s all a slap to his senses as his legs pump, taking him faster and farther, away, away, away, past his block into unfamiliar neighbourhoods. He tries to keep it residential so he doesn’t actually get run over. He focuses on not hitting people and not stopping. If a light’s red, he turns the corner instead. If a pack of kids block the sidewalk, he takes the street. 

His legs burn from biking, and his lungs burns from the cold and too much smoking, and his eyes burn from something that might be tears.

_ My heart burns there, too. _

Fucking Ben. Fucking Eddie.

Fuck himself, he guesses. Fuck Richie, because he’s gonna have to stop biking like the devil’s after him at some point, and by then he’s not gonna be able to walk.

But he has to. He has to keep going, past this night and into the next. 

His parents sent him to a summer camp upstate—only for a week at the end of July, because even they knew there was no way to get him away from his friends for a whole summer. They just wanted him out of the house while they were on vacation, because at fourteen they were probably less trusting of him home alone than when he was twelve.

It was the summer after everything, so he already had the worst sense of deja vu, with the same sweat building up on his back from the hot sun as when they ran away from Niebolt after Eddie broke his arm. The same aroma of corn dogs and funnel cakes as when they discussed their worst fears at the fair. Summer heat and sun and freedom just like the scariest summer of his life. 

He was almost optimistic packing his bags. Getting away from the brutal sameness for a week couldn’t hurt, right?

Nobody knew him at camp, so he wasn’t instantly a massive joke, he just _ told _ jokes, and some guys thought he was funny enough to hang out with. It gave him a bit of a confidence boost knowing that if people didn’t already hate him, he had a chance at making some friends.

Except. 

Except the campers who had been there all summer already had a pecking order. So instead of Richie and the losers getting called queer, it was some other poor suckers. One guy who basically lived in the arts and crafts hall, and another sullen guy who seemed to hate every second of his life, but stuck to the first guy like glue.

Richie didn’t necessarily agree with the rest of the camp jeering at them about sucking each other’s dicks, but he was getting good at ignoring it, because he was gonna have fun at this camp, goddamnit.

_ Except _.

Richie had trouble sleeping in the cabins, because he’d wake up the other campers (seriously, his parents knew he had nightmares, why did they think this was a good idea?) so he took a walk on the hiking trail past lights out. 

And he stumbled onto a scene of the guys he’d been hanging out with wailing on the two dudes who’d been the butt of every joke Richie had heard since he got there.

He froze, his stomach dropping out of him.

Colin’s nose was bleeding. Two guys restrained Tim, the quiet one, hand over his mouth to muffle his screams; his eyes frantic as Colin was pinned to a tree. 

They were throwing the same words the kids from Richie’s high school always shouted at him, and it made him flinch like he was the one getting punched in the stomach instead of Colin.

The dark made it easy to be tricked into seeing himself forced against that tree, with Eddie barely restrained in the attackers’ grip. Or vice versa.

Richie lifted a shaking hand to his mouth, because he was sure he was gonna throw up.

This wasn’t Derry, there wasn’t any clown. These guys just _ hated _ them.

Less than five minutes ago, he’d considered these guys, yelling and violent and cruel, to be his friends. They’d mocked at these two dudes, but what did Richie care? It wasn’t him. But here, their cackling laughter swirled in his ears, and it was different now. In the middle of the night in the middle of the forest. They could kill them. They could kill him.

He didn’t know if some strangled sound escaped his throat, or he rocked back onto a snapping twig, but one of the guys holding Tim back noticed Richie.

For a second he looked startled, but then he smiled in relief. Relief, at it just being Richie. Nausea crested in Richie remembering that just a few hours ago he’d had the fleeting thought that his smile was really kind of cute, actually.

“Tozier,” he greeted. _ Welcomed _ him.

Richie couldn’t let him speak another word. “Counselor’s coming,” he choked out, but they understood him fine.

They dropped Tim and Colin and took off past Richie down the path, disappearing from the scene of the crime.

Richie was still rooted to the spot, knees too weak to move.

Colin fell to the dirt, clutching his stomach. Tim reached out, but Colin jerked away, hissing not to touch him.

Richie swayed dizzily. The campers were all right, weren’t they? These two—they’d snuck off to be alone. In secret.

“What? What!” Tim was screaming, and it took Richie a second to realize it was at _ him _. His bottom lip was split against his braces. “What are you fucking looking at?”

Richie forced himself to spin on his heel. Took one step, then another, and another until he was running to the edge of the lake, where he hurled up his dinner of chili and s’mores.

He couldn’t look anyone in the eye the rest of his time at camp. So he got his homo reputation back real quick, and he’d never been more relieved to see his parents when they picked him up at the end of the week. 

He calls Bev when he gets home at one a.m.

He’s bone-dead exhausted, but the thought of sleep remains unappealing. If he’s not curled against Eddie, how can he rest? How can he relax, thinking about Eddie like that?

Bev answers on the second ring. “Who is it?”

“Marsh!” he crows in greeting, a little less terrified just at the sound of her voice.

“Tozier!” she replies in kind. 

He takes a long chug of water in his dark kitchen. Moonlight casts shadows across the grimy counter tops. His heavy breathing joins the fridge’s buzzing as the only other sound in the room. His shirt’s a second skin stuck to his back with sweat.

“Are you… alright?” Bev asks after a moment.

“See, now, that’s the question of a real friend.” Richie tries not to pant. “My roommate’s girlfriend just asked what’s wrong with me.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Richie, what’s wrong with you?”

_ I wanna kiss my best friend. _

He groans, low in his throat, and slides down the counter to sit on the floor. “If I start listing it all, we’ll be here all night.”

“Are you physically injured?” she asks, not particularly worried, but certainly… concerned. It must easy to be concerned about him. The one role he can’t play is that of a functional human being.

“No, I was just riding my bike.”

“At one in the morning?”

“Yeah, it’s a thing here in New York. It’s called night riding.”

“Night riding?”

“Like Night Rider? Ever heard of it?”

“No,” Bev lies. “Is there a reason you were night riding and not, say, I dunno—sleeping in your bed?”

But of course he can’t _ tell _ her. Bev would read all the way into what happened, get to the bottom of it and force a confrontation with himself that he isn’t ready to have.

So instead Richie says, “You still have nightmares?”

Bev makes a sympathetic noise. “Yeah. They bad for you, too?”

He leans his forehead against his knee and hums in the affirmative. It’s not a lie. It’s, unfortunately, very true.

“When was the last time you slept?” she asks.

“Last night.” She doesn’t need to worry. “I was at Eddie’s.”

They slept in separate beds Saturday night, for no discernible reason other than that they were grown-ass men, and logic dictated they not spoon in a dorm-sized twin mattress again. 

“Oh, you saw Eddie again? Good, he’s been going through some stuff.”

Richie hides his dry puff of laughter behind his hand. He wonders if Eddie makes enough new friends whether he’ll have less time to answer Richie’s many calls. 

“Yeah.” He adds with a mutter, “I don’t know if I’m helping.”

Dragging him to parties that trigger their fight or flight response. Running into clowns to beat up.

Just being around Eddie dredges up memories he’s spent the past year trying to bury with drugs and alcohol. But it hadn’t worked and he’s not over it, none of them are. Maybe that’s why Stan’s so distant, because he doesn’t want the reminder. Richie hopes it’s possible that ignoring your past long enough will make it go away, because it hasn’t worked for him yet.

He probably needs a therapist, if he’s being honest with himself. But he isn’t.

He chugs more water but his throat’s still raw. 

“Richie?” Bev says, like she can sense his distress through the phone line. “Is it really just nightmares? Or are you going through stuff too?”

“I’m fine, Bev,” he says raggedly. He shouldn’t have called. She’s gonna yank the truth out of him whether he likes it or not. To distract her, he asks, “Why’d you never date Bill or Ben?”

“What?”

“Like, they both got a kiss, but then nothing happened.”

He’d never asked before; he’d liked that things hadn’t changed. Did the three of them ever talk about what it all meant? Had she given them an explanation, or did they just all move on with unanswered questions and hopeless what-ifs? 

“I—I moved away,” Bev says.

“You visited like every weekend.”

She still sounds thrown-off. “Did they say something to you?”

He laughs. “No.” Though Ben was clearly super not over it. Bill had enough self-loathing to at least not be so obvious if he was still pining. “Is it weird that I’m asking?”

“I mean, yeah. But you’re a weird guy so I guess it’s not that weird.”

“Perfect, so I can say whatever I want without any follow up questions.” Before she could agree, he ploughed on, “Do you think anyone other than the losers will ever really know you?”

“Um,” she hums for a long moment, smoking or sipping on something. “I’d certainly hope so. I don’t wanna be known by only six people my whole life.”

“But do you think it’s possible?”

“Yeah,” she says definitively. “You just have to let them.”

Richie scrapes a piece of dried food off the tile next to him. “What if you don’t wanna?”

“I do.”

“Have you?”

“Are you, like, high?” she asks.

He rolls his eyes. “No, I’m depressingly sober. Are you gonna humour me, or should I hang up?”

“No…” She considers for a moment. “Last year, this senior I was friends with told me how she got a boyfriend right away her freshman year, and they broke up over the summer, and then going into second year, she didn’t know how to _ be _. Everything about her college experience had been defined by her boyfriend. It freaked me the fuck out.”

Richie nods knowingly. “Most of my college experience has been defined by drugs and alcohol, so I get it.”

“Ooh, Richie, I’m so glad you can relate!” He can picture her grin, her eyes squeezed shut with sarcastic mirth. She continues, “I’m still figuring out who I am, you know? Before anyone else tries to tell me who to be.”

And that is so profound, and so like Beverly, but also so not—she’s always been so sure of herself. Sure enough to strip down to her underwear and be the first to jump off a cliff in front of boys she’d met a day before. Confident enough to take on a clown who’d lost her fear because she’d lived with a monster more terrifying and taken him down.

She _ knew _ who she was, and yet she was still questioning it.

Her uncertainty comforted Richie in a way he wasn’t sure was healthy.

“Nobody can tell Beverly Marsh who to be,” he says in an attempt at being supportive.

“And what about you?” she asks. “Have you gotten to know yourself yet?

He fists his hand against his knee. An auto-response comes out. “Oh, I get to _ know _ myself nearly every night—”

“Trashmouth,” she groans. “Okay, well, you’re back to old self—”

“How do you know?” he teases. “Don’t I get to decide who myself is?”

“You do,” Bev says, not teasing at all. “We all do. Bullies and assholes don’t define us, Rich. They never did. You know that, right?”

Fuck, bullies don’t define him, but his friends sure do. Who would he be without Bev in his life?

He tilts his head back against the cabinet. “I miss you, Marsh.”

“I miss you, too. Get some sleep?”

“Okay.”

They hang up and it’s a battle to convince himself to haul his ass to bed instead of falling asleep on the kitchen floor. He compromises with the living room couch.

Richie passes out long enough to miss most of his Monday classes despite his roommates clattering around well into the morning, but he’s managed to suppress a hell of a lot after a good night’s rest.

He doubles down on his side hustle, and does essays for subjects he’s never learned paired with a beer for each one because whatever, it’s still moderation if this time last year he was going through two bottles of vodka a week. He needs the distraction. 

Him and Eddie are still talking, but Richie’s had to squeeze his eyes shut to stop himself from saying something stupid like, “So, we kissed, huh? How crazy is that?” Because he imagines the conversation that would follow, and it’d be awkward and stilted until Richie blamed it all on rum and weed. And that’s not a lie, but it sure as hell isn’t the truth. He couldn’t blame inebriation for turning the moment over and over again in his mind like a stone for weeks afterwards.

But he manages not to mention it. And neither does Eddie. They can’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, lemme know what you thought!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm on vacation this week, so here's another chapter, after just a few notes.  
I don't know what getting a drama degree would entail, so I'm truly pulling shit out of my ass. I meant to mention that earlier lol.  
The """"epilogue"""" is now 15k, so I'm gonna be posting that as a separate work once this is done (this is not the first time this has happened to me--I just get carried away with writing cute couple scenes, so sue me).  
Also, I just wrote a short chapter in Eddie POV!! It's just him reflecting on what's been going on. That'll be the chapter after next.

The end of the semester comes before Richie’s really ready for it, and exams pass in a flurry of hot water and lemon so his “instrument” doesn’t become “compromised” (spoken by no less than three of his professors), and reading more drama theory and ancient plays than he could ever truly process, just to write barely comprehensible essays. 

Everyone else is just as, if not substantially _ more _, busy than Richie, so phone calls peter to a minimum with the losers, even Eddie.

Then it’s the holidays, and Richie visits extended family in Michigan with his parents and sister. Some of his cousins bring along significant others, which Richie has never understood. If you really loved someone, why would you subject them to your relatives?

Since Richie obviously came alone, it prompts a great-aunt he’s only met three times in his whole existence to ask Richie if he has a special someone in his life, which he doesn’t appreciate the wording of at all. Of course he has special people in his life, how pathetic does she think he is? 

But the the words ‘special someone’ sparking a memory from the rave—of Eddie leaning against his chest and looking up at him with big dark eyes—startles Richie so much he can’t even think of a witty retort.

He mutters something about focusing on his studies and goes outside to smoke.

Richie’s heaping mashed potatoes onto his plate to drench in gravy. He’s at the kids’ table, because of course he is, and one of the children he’s sitting with asks to try his wine.

“It’s juice,” Richie says.

“No, all the grown-ups are drinking wine,” the kid argues. It’s the child of one of his cousins, so he’s once-removed or however that works. His name is almost certainly Devin. Though it might be Declan. 

“Then I guess I’m not a grown up, because I’m drinking sparkling juice.”

Probably-Devin juts his chin out. “Prove it. Lemme try.”

Richie rolls his eyes and hands him his cup, and then gets up to find another one, because he doesn’t wanna drink this kid’s backwash.

“Hey, it’s juice!” Devin shouts as Richie leaves the dining room.

He’d pulled the same shit when he was—eight? Nine? Young enough to still get cooed at for being ‘so _ cute _!’ and old enough to be smart enough to use it to his advantage. He went up to all the adults in attendance and asked for ‘A sip, just a sip!’ and tasted all sorts of new burning concoctions. He found everything very funny the rest of the night, until he passed out on the floor under the tree before dessert.

His mom’s grabbing paper towels in the kitchen as Richie pours himself another glass of sparkling juice out of the fridge.

“There’s wine on the table,” she says absently.

He snorts a laugh. “I’m working on moderation.”

Anticipating a full week of wanting to desperately drink to escape the soul-crushing reality of being with family, he’d resolved not drink at all. He’s going through a pack day instead, but at least he’s not constantly suffering from a mid-level hangover. 

“Do you have trouble moderating your alcohol consumption?” his mom asks out of the blue.

Richie blinks. 

His answer would be no. He suspects Eddie’s would be different.

“Depends who you ask,” he says.

They return to the dining room. His mom’s drinking diet coke.

His dad and him end up in the same miserable corner and are forced to make chit chat while little cousins tear into brightly coloured wrapping.

“How are your… classes?” his dad asks.

“Great. How’s work?”

“Good.”

Under the tree, his seven year old cousin shrieks with glee at the newest Barbie in her hands. 

“Do you need condoms?” is his dad’s second question.

“What?” Richie chugs his sparkling juice, forgetting it’s not alcohol. He grimaces at the sweetness. “I can buy my own condoms, dad.”

“I’d hope so. They’re cheaper than a STD treatment. Or a baby, let me tell ya.”

He’s drunk. Richie knows this because, besides the fact he’s been chugging hot toddies since they walked through the door, he’s not enunciating his vowels properly. 

So Richie says, “I’m a virgin.”

His dad narrows his eyes. “I didn’t believe your sister when she told me that after she broke up with that college fella with a motorcycle, and I don’t believe you, either.”

Richie pushes his glasses up his nose with a shrug. “It’s not my fault you don’t trust your kids.”

“Not five minutes ago your sister called you a pussy for not drinking, and you said you are what you eat.”

His father skips the vulgar tongue-between-fingers gesture that had accompanied Richie’s retort.

“So I’m a liar,” he says, unfazed. “Remember when you said you wanted the best for me and would always support me?”

His dad shakes his head and walks away.

“Me neither,” Richie mutters.

When Richie was sixteen, his dad did something very uncomfortable. He interrupted Richie eating cereal and reading a comic book at the kitchen table and put a box of condoms in front of him.

Richie gaped at them, milk dribbling down his chin, and looked up at his dad. “They aren’t mine.”

He sighed through his nose. “Yes they are.”

“What, did Peggy plant them in my room? I swear to god—”

“I’m _ giving _ them to you,” he interrupted brusquely.

“For what?”

“I’m sure you learned this in school, Richie.”

Richie stared at him like he’d just walked off an alien planet. “Uh no, dad. They taught us if we had pre-marital sex we’d die.”

He frowned. At a mutter, he said, “That can’t be right.”

“They had a priest come in.”

“What?”

“Where the _ fuck _ do you think we live?”

“Oh,” he released in a long exhale, like the holy ghost was ripping out of him. He gripped the back of a kitchen chair and settled in slowly. “Okay, well, this will be a much longer conversation—”

Richie waved his spoon around to stop him. “As much as I’d love to watch you struggle through talking to me for more than five minutes, I’ll cut you off. Me and the losers had our own sex ed.”

Last year it came to light that none of the boys knew how periods worked, when they were out in the woods and Bev announced in a panic she had to go back to town to buy tampons, and one of them asked why she didn’t just hold it in.

So Ben and Mike, because they lived in the library, and Eddie, because he could already list every STD alphabetically, took the helm on giving the losers the birds and the bees talk.

And it turned out that none of them knew all the details of how pregnancy happened, so it was very enlightening. Bill had taken notes.

Probably the second weirdest thing they’d all done together, preceded only by vanquishing a demon murder clown in the sewers under their town.

His father somehow looked even more panicked than he did when he thought Richie didn’t know what condoms were. Very seriously, he said, “In what way did you and your friends have sex ed, Richie?”

Richie wasn’t about to explain the pop quiz Ben gave them, so he just said, “Books exist? Like, the librarians didn’t _ enjoy _ lending out books about the reproductive system to high schoolers, but Eddie threatened to call the cops for preventing freedom of speech if they didn’t so…”

His dad melted against the chair like a deflated balloon, tension draining from his shoulders. Absently, he said, “That’s not what freedom of speech is.”

“Ask me if I give a _ shiiiit _.” He scooped more cereal into his mouth. It was all soggy now.

His dad got up and was fully about to just leave without another word, but Richie picked up the condoms and called, “Hello? Is there a reason you’re giving me these?”

He stopped in the doorway. “You’re always saying you’re drowning in pussy. I don’t want you getting some poor girl pregnant.”

Which was the figurative frying pan to Richie’s cartoon face. 

He left Richie in shock, and alone with the condoms. His dad had to be the only person in Derry who believed he was in need of them.

It wasn’t until later that night that Richie realized why his dad got so freaked out at the idea of the losers giving themselves sex ed. His dad thought they all got their dicks out and went to town on each other, didn’t he? Thought they had a fucking orgy in the clubhouse. As if Richie would ever tell his dad if that happened.

Later on, Richie calls Ben’s mom’s house, because that’s where Eddie’s spending Christmas.

Ben answers, and they talk for a few minutes.

“I never would’ve guessed how much I’d appreciate socks as a present,” Ben was saying. “Because you don’t wanna waste your money on socks, right? But you still need them! And now I have them. Life sure is a journey.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Benjamin, how many rum and eggnogs have you had?”

“Only one,” Ben replies. “Plus two. Do you wanna talk to Eddie?”

“That would be incredible.”

Richie shifts his position as Ben tracks down Eddie. He’s sitting on the floor of his aunt’s bedroom, phone cord winding up to its base on the bedside table. His relatives are either sitting at the dining table drinking coffee and shit-talking the family who couldn’t make it, or are crowded around the TV watching _ A Christmas Story _ with drunken relish.

He’s not hiding, he’s just electing not to participate in holiday activities.

“Richie!” Eddie shouts when he gets on the phone. “Merry Christmas!”

Richie closes his eyes and leans his head against the box spring. “Hi, Eds. Tell me something good.”

Eddie, who has clearly also imbibed on a few adult eggnogs, gives him a full rundown of the festivities so far. He lets Eddie’s words ground him, his rapid-fire delivery a comfort he used to take for granted.

“How are your holidays going?” Eddie asks when he finishes.

Richie tells Eddie he’s taking it dry and just smoking, and Eddie makes a pleased humming sound. “That’s very responsible. Except for the cigarettes. You can’t sacrifice your lungs just to save your liver.”

“Well then I’d be sacrificing my sanity, and I don’t have enough of that as it is.”

“Can’t argue with that.” There’s a voice in the background, and Eddie half-covers the receiver to reply, “Yeah, this is her. Uh huh, yes, very exciting.” He returns to speaking to Richie. “Sorry.”

“What was that about?”

He heaves a great sigh. “Ben’s aunt loves me, which is great and all, except she keeps trying to set me up with her daughter. Finally I had to tell her I already have my eye on someone back at school.”

Richie’s breath leaves him in a _ swoop _. “Do you?”

“What? No, doofus, I just don’t wanna date Ben’s cousin.”

“Why not?”

There’s a long, weighted pause.

Richie’s not sure why he asked.

Eddie’s relationship with dating is… non-existent. He doesn’t complain about girls not being interested like Richie and Stan do. He doesn’t silently pine with respectful crushes like Ben and Bill. He sure doesn’t occasionally go out with girls from church that he never asks out again like Mike. 

Eddie doesn’t date, and Richie’s never really thought about _ why _ before. Presumably, it’s about the diseases and danger that can arise from physical intimacy. A few kids got mono their freshman year, and he refused to eat any cafeteria food for a month in case one of them had sneezed in it. For the few parties they got invited to, he rant-talked his way out of every Spin the Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven situation, citing cold sores as a one-way ticket to the grave. 

So it made sense that Eddie doesn’t date because of all that.

But Richie’s fingers flutter to his own mouth, where the shape of Eddie’s lips is mapped. Eddie had never complained the many, many times they kissed.

“Because I’m—” Eddie makes a choked, cut-off noise. He manages to spit out, “Do I need a reason? _ You _ date her.”

“She hot?”

Richie winces.

He doesn’t know why he said that, either.

There’s another pause wherein Richie wallows in his own stupidity.

“Yes, Richie, she’s really hot,” Eddie says flatly. “You want me to get her number for you?”

Fuck, he needs a drink.

“Nah, your mom’ll get jealous,” he replies for lack of a better response.

“She asked about you, you know.”

“Your mom?” he says incredulously.

“Yeah, when I called to wish her a merry Christmas. She was still trying to convince me to come for dinner _ today _. When I’m like eight hours away.”

“But what did she say about _ me _?”

He laughs. “She blames you for me refusing to visit. Bad influence, you never see your family either.”

“I’m seeing my family right now, and I very much regret it!” Richie argues.

Eddie laughs again, and it’s the most at home Richie’s felt all night. “It’s almost over. And then you’ll be back home in New York. Call me when you get back, alright? I gotta go.”

The rest of break passes without incident and before he knows it, Richie’s back in frigid student housing.

He congratulates himself on a dry Christmas with his family by ringing in the new year at a party of someone he barely knows and getting black out drunk. He deserves it.

Bill calls at some point in January. “How are you doing?” 

“Living the fucking dream, my man,” Richie lies through his teeth. “What’s going on with you?”

He gets Bill talking about school, and how his parents and doing, and what’s going on with him, and since Richie can’t sit still for two whole seconds while on the phone, he decides to be productive and start tossing all his dirty clothes from the floor into his hamper.

Bill’s making friends, Richie gleans from all the unfamiliar names he drops while talking about the writing club he’s joined. That’s exciting. How many friends can a person have? Richie seems to be capped out at six. 

“What have you been up to?” Bill asks.

At this point Richie’s on the floor rounding up balled-up socks that have rolled under his bed. “Nothing.”

Which is the wrong thing to say to not prompt follow-up questions, because Richie not motoring his mouth off is apparently a desperate plea for help.

“What’s wrong?” 

Richie heaves a sigh, sending dust billowing into his face. He sits upright to sneeze, leaving the socks to their dusty destiny on the floor.

“I’m having a crisis,” Richie tosses out, since he knows Bill won’t stop until he gets something.

“About what?”

“Can’t tell you.” He wipes his glasses, still on his face, against the bed sheet to rid them of debris. “Just give me general feel-good advice and I’ll tell you if it’s hitting the mark.”

“D-d-did you kill someone?” 

“Now I know they call me lady-killer—”

“Since when can’t you tell me stuff?” Bill’s kind of joking, but frustration’s leaking through. And maybe some hurt, too.

“Okay, I don’t _ want _ to. Is that better?” Richie tries to console him. “Don’t worry, your best friendship status isn’t being put into question here.”

He shouldn’t have brought it up when there’s no way he’s giving Bill details, but he’s desperate for Bill’s grounding advice like always.

“Is this about you or someone else?”

“We’re not playing twenty questions.”

“I see,” Bill says.

And Richie’s sure he does see, right through Richie into the exact crisis that Richie has been having, with varying rates of intensity, for almost ten years.

Richie’s still not gonna give it words.

“Are you, maybe, making it into something bigger than it is?” Bill asks.

“Oh, so you’re minimizing my experience? Cool take,” Richie says sarcastically.

“Huh?”

He flops onto his bed, picking at the peeling paint on his wall. “I _ may _ have seen a counselor here at school.”

“Oh?” His parents had sent him to enough therapy after Georgie that Richie knew he wouldn’t be weird about it.

Richie hadn’t gone because of… the kissing business—there was no making sense of that. But with the trouble sleeping he’s had, Clara had signed him up for a session and frog-marched him there herself because he was waking the whole house up with his screaming night terrors.

Richie mutters, “She may have said I use humour to minimize and deflect from my emotional distress. Not like that’s breaking any new ground, here. We’ve all taken a Psych 101 class.”

Bill replies slowly, like he’s searching for the right words. “Well I don’t mean to minimize your situation, Rich, but you don’t wanna tell me what’s going on. So all I’ll say is that sometimes you make a big deal out of something that turns out perfectly fine.”

“You’re mixing up your friends, Bill. Eddie’s the one who does that.”

“You do it too, d-d-dickhead.”

Richie laughs, and decides that Bill is maybe not wrong. No one worries like Eddie, but it’s not like Richie’s never blown things out of proportion before.

This mess of feelings in his gut, though, it’s big. And it’s not going away.

Richie wraps his arms around his knees. He takes off the glasses digging into his face, and then everything is a nice blur in front of him. Chin tucked against his chest, Richie admits, “I dunno, Bill. This feels… catastrophic.”

“You’ve survived catastrophic before,” Bill says gently. “And you have us, you know? We’ll always be here.”

And they’re not _ here _ here, but they’re close enough, and even if they all lived on the same block, it wouldn’t help Richie with this.

“Yeah, I know,” Richie says in a small voice.

“Whenever you wanna tell me, or any of us, we’ll listen.”

Richie nods and changes the topic. They chat for a while longer, mostly about the other losers. The ache in Richie’s chest expands and contracts all at the same time. 

Before it was made clear to him that he shouldn’t, Richie choreographed dances to songs from MTV. His overabundance of energy wouldn’t let him sit still, so his mom definitely encouraged it; she’d rather he was dancing than jumping off the roof with an umbrella trying to fly. 

Bill, Stan and Eddie had joined him, until they foolishly danced along to _ Like A Virgin _ playing from a boom box at the park and got pushed into the mud. They’d have gotten worse if they hadn’t been like eight at the time.

That is to say, it had been a while since Richie had done choreography. But he’d signed himself up for a musical theatre course for some reason, so he’s learning what a two-step is and how to hit his marks. He hasn’t lost that overflow of energy yet, but it’s harder to concentrate it on something productive instead of fucking around.

They’re about a month into the semester, and the musical theatre teacher keeps talking about weekend rehearsal, which Richie is not interested in. Weekends are reserved strictly for eating, sleeping, drinking, and sometimes, like this upcoming one, an Eddie trip.

Richie leans over and whispers in Clara’s ear, “What’s this weekend rehearsal BS?”

She side-eyes him. “It’s this weekend.”

“Huh?” 

“For the showcase?”

“For the what?”

The professor interrupts their productive dialogue. “Do you need me to repeat something? I hope that’s the only reason you’re speaking while I’m speaking.”

“Clara’s full of shit, right?” Richie asks. She rolls her eyes and walks away from him. “We don’t have rehearsal this weekend.”

“I would direct you to the syllabus on which it’s detailed for more information,” the prof says condescendingly. “Mr. Tozier, would you care to explain how you even manage to reach this class on time?”

“Clara’s always macking on my roommate before I’m supposed to leave.” He makes a squelching kissy face. “Like an alarm clock for me.”

“Richie!” She chucks her script at him.

He lets it hit him in the face and explains to the teacher, “Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it. Prior commitments, you understand.”

He hasn’t been up to see Eddie in months. Since the rave. Since they kissed. Eddie’s wanted to get settled into this semester’s classes before inviting the distraction of Richie back into his dorm room. 

That’s what he’d told Richie, anyway. He wonders if Eddie has the same low-level worry simmering in his gut about seeing him in person again.

“If you are not present for these rehearsals,” the prof says, “you will not be eligible for the showcase. If you don’t perform in the showcase, you will not pass this class.”

Richie nods sagely. “Then it sounds like I have a lot to think about.”

“Fuck off, Tozier,” Bryant calls from across the room.

That night, Richie is obnoxiously rehearsing his lines in the living room while his roommates play video games. They’re mostly ignoring him, but Clara’s giving him notes. 

His phone rings. He’d brought it with him from his room, anticipating an Eddie call.

Richie stops mid-sentence to answer the phone. “Horndogs R Us. What’re you horny for?”

“Yeah, maybe your twink friend can listen to you instead,” Jordan says, attention fixed on the TV.

“He’s drowning in more pussy than you, Jordan,” Richie snaps as he heads up the stairs.

He’d made the mistake of showing his roommates a group shot of the losers during their New York trip, which featured a pouting Eddie two seconds away from getting hugged by Richie. Jordan had been making fun of ‘Richie’s little friend’ all week. Clara thought Eddie was cute, though, which was the appropriate response.

“What’s a twink?” Eddie asks.

Richie nearly chokes on his spit. “It’s nothing, what did you get up to today? Make any friends? Break any hearts?”

It’s dumb enough to change the flow of conversation.

Eventually Eddie gets around to confirming, “So you’ll be here around four tomorrow?”

Richie scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah…”

“What? You find something better to do?”

“No, I’ve uh…” Richie clicks his tongue “I’ve got rehearsal all weekend. Apparently it was in the syllabus, but what do they expect me to do, _ read_?”

“Read? In college? Perish the thought.”

“Right?” he laughs awkwardly. “But uh… They need me there, y’know? I carry the whole performance.”

He practically hears Eddie roll his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure without backup dancer number three, the whole thing will fall apart.”

There’s a heavy feeling in his stomach as he kicks his theatre bag out of the way. “I might be able to skip out early on Sunday.”

“What, and be here for three hours and get back in the middle of the night?”

Richie shrugs.

His silence maybe solidifies that he’s not bullshitting, because Eddie’s playful tone disappears when he says, “So it’s important?” 

“Apparently.” 

“Okay…” Eddie drags out. “Well, school comes first.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”

He feels bad cancelling last minute, especially when it’s been so long since he last visited, but deep down there’s a bit of sick relief that he’s not gonna have to face him. Because he knows as soon as Eddie’s in front of him, all the thoughts he’s worked so hard on pushing down will spring right back to the top like a jack in the box.

“I’ll come visit you,” Eddie says after a minute. “Is it open rehearsal? I can hang out in the theatre and study.”

Richie’s shocked. “You wanna stay at _ my _ place?”

“Yeah, it’ll give you a reason to clean up. You’re free tomorrow afternoon, right? Get scrubbing.”

“Wow, you miss me that much?” A fluttering in his chest threatens to knock over his carefully crafted emotional barrier already. 

“Fuck off,” Eddie laughs. “I mean it, if I get an allergic reaction from staying at yours, I’m never talking to you again.”

Richie rolls his eyes and scoffs, but as soon as they’re done talking, he’s taking stock of their cleaning supply collection. Their broom is broken in half and there’s a bucket with a crack down the side. He rips the last stuck-on paper towel off the roll with a sigh. 

He tilts his head back and yells, “Somebody drive me to the store!”

“Stick that bike up your ass and take yourself,” Lucas calls back from an undetermined room.

“I need a broom. And a mop. And bleach...” He looks around. “So much bleach.”

Clara graciously agrees to drive him, only because she’s excited he’s actually going to clean the house.

Once he has the necessary supplies, Richie gets halfway through cleaning the bathtub before deciding on a nap. He wakes up at 3AM and tries to resume, but makes too much noise for the delicate ears of his roommates, who send him back to bed.

So it’s all for Friday after classes, and he manages to get it all done before Eddie’s supposed to arrive, but just barely.

All for the best, really. His nerves wouldn’t let him sit still even if he didn’t have this gargantuan task to complete. It’s like the sleepover they had after their first ever kiss; excitement and dread and tight anticipation all tangling together. 

But it can’t happen again this time. (Unless they get drunk). They’re grown. They know what they’re doing. (They’re not gonna get drunk). 

Richie’s challenge is just to stop fantasizing about it.

He returns from taking the fifth bag of garbage out to the curb, and Jordan and Clara are just sitting on the couch, because Richie had forbidden them from eating, drinking, or smoking in the living room while Eddie was visiting.

“So again,” Jordan says. “You didn’t spend half the day cleaning in exchange for the best BJ of your life, but for your little friend from Derry?”

Jordan’s flabbergasted why anyone would do this much work without the promise of sex, and has asked Richie the same flavour of question four times already.

“You’ll get it when you meet him.” Richie strips off his shirt on his way to the bathroom for a quick shower.

“Quit complaining,” Clara says to Jordan. “I’ve been telling you clean this place for months!”

“Maybe you need to work on your blowie skills,” Richie suggests, running the rest of the way to the bathroom to avoid whatever projectile Clara launches. 

It hits the door behind him with a thud.

Since nobody had anything better to do than bone down in their small town, there was a gonorrhea outbreak among the sexually active students during junior year. The losers were not affected. Obviously.

However, this prompted Eddie to start carrying condoms in his fanny pack.

“For, like, _ you _?” Ben asked incredulously. 

They were in the clubhouse when Eddie mentioned it, offhandedly, as if the announcement wasn’t going to trigger a whole conversation.

He huffed, going a little red. “No, not for me.”

“For me and my magnum dong,” Richie crowed. 

Eddie swatted at him, but Richie ducked out of his reach.

“It’s a health product,” Eddie insisted.

Stan raised a brow over his comic book. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”

He spread his hands. “STDs spread like wildfire, we all saw it happen. Having contraceptives available is the responsible call. Clearly abstinence-only education just leads to AIDS, or pregnancy, or AIDS pregnancies, but I’m not gonna be part of the problem. I’m part of the solution!”

“So if somebody asks you the proper condom-rolling technique, are you gonna be able to help?” Stan asked.

Eddie’s face turned an even brighter red. Richie wondered what a more embarrassing answer would be to that question, yes or no.

Bev, sitting upside down on a rickety chair, said, “Eddie… can I ask you something? Not to be rude or weird or anything.”

“Do you need a condom?” he asked flatly.

“Yeah, for me and my magnum dong,” she deadpanned. Laughter sputtered out of Bill. She flipped over to sit upright and continued undeterred. “Does the idea of sex, like, gross you out? With your whole thing, are you interested at all?”

Richie flung himself into the hammock and pretended he wasn’t interested in Eddie’s response.

Eddie’s face twisted like she’d sprayed lemon juice at him. “Obviously it’s gross. Human bodies are designed all wrong, with the reproductive system all tied up in the waste system.”

Which only answered half the question. Just because it grossed him out didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it. They were all familiar with Eddie’s workarounds; laying down towels, hand sanitizer, gloves.

Brushing his teeth and mint gun. It popped to Richie’s mind unprompted and unwelcome. As did his next thought; that to have sex with Eddie, both involved parties would probably just need to fastidiously shower and double bag it.

If Eddie even _ wanted _ to have sex. 

Richie turned his attention to his ragged shoelaces so he wasn’t looking at Eddie while imagining him showering in preparation of losing his virginity. In fact, he tried to think of literally anything else. 

“That’s, like, every animal, though,” Mike pointed out.

“So you don’t want to? Ever?” Bev asked Eddie curiously.

They were all curious, Bev! Whether Eddie planned to stand on the sidelines while the rest of them fucked and got married and had kids. It didn’t mean you got to ask the question.

“I want to,” Richie interrupted, so she would give up her interrogation. “If you’re offering, Beverly.”

No less than three projectiles were lobbed at him, one of which was a shoe. 

When he emerged from the pile of anger-fuelled objects, Eddie was looking at him with a crease between his brows that set Richie’s gut churning for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Richie convinces Clara to drive him to pick Eddie up from the train station, too. He doesn’t feel bad making her his chauffeur, because he _ did _ just clean the house like she’s been complaining about forever.

“He better be as neurotic as you say,” Clara says as they wait in the parking lot for Eddie to appear. “I don’t believe the kid’s never taken a bus before.”

“Oh, he has,” Richie corrects her. “He just hated it. I mean, I _ get _ it. I’ve definitely gotten sick here more times than in Derry. But don’t tell him that.”

She rolls her eyes. “Your secret’s safe—”

But Richie’s spotted Eddie leaving the building, so he leaps out of the car to run over and grab him in a hug.

“Hey,” Richie grins at him, hands on his shoulders. 

Eddie’s all bundled up in a puffy coat and a cute knit cap. Richie’s caught in his big brown eyes for a second, and the cork Richie’s stopped his feelings with shudders a little.

“Tell me that you hopping out of a car means I don’t have to take the bus,” Eddie says.

Instead of moving closer to Eddie’s mouth like his body is traitorously leaning towards, Richie wraps an arm around his shoulders and squeezes him to his side. “Only the best for you, Eds. Just don’t complain about the cigarette smell.”

Eddie’s very polite to Clara during the car ride, which leaves a puzzled look on her face all the way home until the second they get through the door and the roommates size Eddie up.

“Nice fanny pack,” Jordan scoffs. “You stock your condoms in there?”

“Yeah, but I don’t keep size small, so you’d be out of luck,” Eddie responds without missing a beat.

“Burn!” Richie lifts a hand and Eddie gives him a high five without looking.

“There it is.” Clara points between the two of them. “He seemed way too nice to be friends with you.”

“He is too nice to be friends with me,” Richie says at the same time Eddie says, “I _ am _ too nice to be friends with him.”

“Alright, I’m out,” says the roommate who doesn’t hang out with them anyway, heading for the stairs. “One Tozier’s bad enough, let alone two.”

Richie’s still bouncing around Eddie, excited he’s here, excited to show him off, and show off the house. It’s the first time he’s been here, and it’s not like Richie’s put any effort into decorations or interior design, but it’s still his home, and Eddie gets to be here now.

And he’d spent _ so _ fucking long cleaning today.

Eddie reaches into his bag and pulls out some boring looking boxes.

“Is that food?” Jordan asks.

Eddie gives him a look of total incomprehension. “This is a radon testing kit. Jordan, was it? You know all these old houses are filled with radon. Not to mention asbestos, but professionals need to test for that. And this place doesn’t look at all up to code, by the way. One strong wind could blow it over, and spread all the asbestos, and black mould—”

Lucas leans in to read the kit Eddie’s opening. “Dude, what are you, a house inspector?” 

“How didn’t you check for any of this before you moved in?” Eddie turns to Richie. “These are common homeowner problems.”

“We’re renting,” Richie replies simply.

Eddie sends him a withering look. He places a little plastic cylinder on top of the fridge, and then Lucas takes the rest of them, engrossed by the prospect of testing for radon all on his own.

“Richie spent all day cleaning for you,” Clara says with a twist of a question. Richie’s not sure if she’s aiming to get him praised or made fun of.

“Yeah, well, I told him to, so…” Eddie crouches and squints at the floorboards coated in a thick layer of dust. “Hm.”

“Ah, don’t look down there.” Richie pushes him down the hall. “Check out the bathroom.”

Once he's there, Eddie says, “I mean, it smells like mould."

“There’s no mould!” He’d scrubbed it away with bleach. “How are you smelling mould over the bleach?”

He walks out of the room. “Bleach is bad for my asthma, Richie.”

“You don’t have asthma!”

Clara watches them curiously as they return to the living room. “There’s definitely mould in the bathroom.”

“Then call our landlord,” Richie retorts. “Oh wait, you don’t live here!”

“Have you not told your landlord about the mould?” Eddie asks, a smirk crawling across his lips.

Richie lunges at him, but Eddie ducks and darts up the stairs.

“Bring my bags,” he yells over his shoulder. “Where’s your room?”

He grabs all Eddie’s bags in two hands and races to follow, grinning wide.

“What the fuck,” he hears Jordan says, “was that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! What do you think's gonna happen next chapter with them staying together at Richie's??? I can guarantee you most guesses will be wrong, but tell me anyway! And let me know how you're liking it :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! I'm excited for this chapter, there's a lot of twists and turns--and by that I mean sudden tonal changes and possibly bad pacing--but it's a rough weekend for these guys, what can I say?  
TW homophobia, nightmares about the clown, discussions of alcoholism  
Please enjoy!

Richie gets Eddie settled in and gives him a tour, during which he’s reminded that Lucas’ friends are coming over to hang out tonight, which Richie had blanked on in his mad dash to clean the house. So the living room’s pristine state is not long for this world, but that was an inevitability anyway. And hanging out with his roommates is probably a better idea than spending all night alone in his room with Eddie anyway. He’s not sure what they’d get up to with all that time.

They make a snack run to the closest bodega before everyone comes over. It’s bitterly cold, and already getting dark, but Richie has Eddie tucked into his side to keep him warm.

“Bullshit,” Eddie spits, laughing as they clamber up his front steps upon their return. “_ You’re _ the one who’s freezing in just a leather jacket.”

Richie shakes his head, teeth chattering. “I’m warm as hell, bro.” He drops the bag of pop and candy on the foyer floor and slaps his icy hands to Eddie’s cheeks. “See?”

Eddie yelps and shoves him off. “Wear gloves, I’ve given you so many pairs of gloves!”

“They make me look like a nerd.”

“You are a nerd.” 

Richie doesn’t have a comeback, because his attention snags on the rosy red in Eddie’s cheeks and the way he tries to smooth his hair down after he takes off his knit cap.

Eddie scoops up the bags Richie just dropped, and that’s when they notice Jordan glaring at them from the living room. “Can I _ help _ you?”

Jordan scoffs and says, “Why would I want help from you?”

Richie can already tell Jordan’s gonna be in a pissy mood all night for whatever reason, so he chucks his requested ranch-flavoured corn nuts at his face. “Go suck some nuts, Jordan.”

His face flares red. “Shut the fuck up.”

“So you _ don’t _ want the nuts?” Richie asks, pretending to need clarification. “You always ask for ranch nuts.”

Eddie hides his grin in his shoulder.

His grip tightens on the back of the sofa. “I don’t suck nuts—”

The two of them burst out laughing, and Richie ushers Eddie up the stairs as Lucas comes down asking if they’ve ordered pizza yet.

They drop their coats in Richie’s room and decide to hide out there until the pizza arrives. They shoot the shit for a bit, and it’s normal, it all feels normal. Normal enough.

Eddie’s on the bed and Richie’s in his desk chair, zipping between his desk and bookshelf, showing Eddie random stuff in his room.

Eddie looks up from flipping through a comic book and takes a deep breath. “Um, Rich, I have—uh…”

Richie raises his brows. “Yeah?”

He plays it cool, but Eddie’s composure has taken a stark turn away from the casual nonsense conversation they were having, and the potential reason for it bounces around his skull like a pinball machine; _ Is it the kiss? The kiss the kiss the kiss _? 

Eddie sits there with his mouth open for another second before he shakes his head. “Where am I sleeping tonight?”

It’s not what he was going to say, Richie’s sure of it, but the question still turns his mouth a little dry. His eyes dart to his bed, where Eddie is already sitting. “We have a lovely couch—”

“No. I saw a rat wriggling inside the fabric earlier.”

“You’re a fucking liar, I killed all the rats while I was cleaning.”

He bites his lip to keep from laughing. “Did you remove their corpses?”

“I’m a maid, not a coroner.”

“So you want me to catch the plague sleeping on rat corpses—”

“I can probably pay Lucas to fish them out, he’ll wanna dissect them.”

They go round and round until the the doorbell rings, and Richie knows it’s the pizza. He fast-tracks to the end of their scenic route conversation. “Okay, where do _ you _ wanna sleep?”

They can’t argue about sleeping arrangements in front of his roommates, because acting anything other than disgusted at the mere suggestion of sleeping in the same bed with another guy will send alarm bells ringing in their dumb heads.

Eddie pats Richie’s bed.

Richie stands up so maybe Eddie will miss his blush. “Fine, I’ll take the couch. C’mon, let’s get that pizza before it’s gone.”

A handful of people are over, who Richie knows from the various parties Lucas has invited him to. They’re all Bio majors like Lucas, so since he got a copy of _ Jurassic Park _ on VHS for Christmas, they all wanna get high and argue about its validity.

Someone’s brought a 24 pack, and Richie cracks open a cold one. Clara offers Eddie a beer, because she doesn’t know that he doesn’t like beer. And she sells it like a pro. “It’s swill, but it’s all we got. You want one?”

Eddie’s nose wrinkles. “Ooh, I prefer my swill in more of a cabernet form. Or a pinot grigio? Anything that used to be a mushy grape.”

It’s a joke, and Clara laughs, but Jordan says, “We don’t have any fairy drinks here.”

Richie sees red, and Clara shoots her boyfriend a dirty look. 

One of Lucas’ nerd friends says, “Shut the fuck up, Jordan.” He holds up a bottle of wine. “Little dude, how d’you feel about a five dollar red?”

“I feel great about it, thanks.” 

Richie gets him a cup for the wine and then puts his arm firmly around Eddie’s shoulders.

Jordan rolls his eyes with a scowl.

Eddie ignores him and sips his wine. He wrinkles his nose again. “Wow, you can really taste the five dollars.”

Richie laughs and chugs his beer.

The idea behind the pizza was definitely to eat it during the movie, but it’s all gone before the tape is even in the VCR. So they spread across the living room with chips and candy and light more blunts as the trailers roll, just a few lamps on for visibility in the otherwise dark room.

Richie cranks open the closest window so the smoke doesn’t hang around too long. Eddie toasts him with his plastic cup as Richie sits back down on the floor. He slips an arm around Eddie’s shoulders again, leaning against the couch in front of Clara.

She offers Richie a joint, but before he can take it, Eddie says, “You’ve got rehearsal tomorrow.”

So Richie declines, not because he particularly cares if he’s high for rehearsal, or because Eddie suggested not to, but because if Richie complains at all about feeling like shit the next morning, Eddie will be very smug and very annoying. 

“Your little friend want any?” Jordan asks, certainly not out of the goodness of his heart.

“I don’t put that shit in my body,” Eddie replies with a cheerful smile.

“Pussy,” Jordan mutters. 

Richie lifts his fingers in a ‘V’ to his mouth. “You are what you—”

“Trashmouth,” Eddie accuses under his breath. Richie grins at him.

_ Jurassic Park _ finally starts and one of Lucas’ friends says, “Every time somebody deserves to get eaten, drink!”

Richie doesn’t follow that rule. Jordan does, apparently, because he doesn’t shut up when he’s drunk, and this dude will not shut the fuck up.

He doesn’t know how or why Jordan’s kept all his homophobic insults to himself up until this point, but now they’re rolling off his tongue at the speed of light. Maybe he just never had ammo before because Richie had bent over backward acting as hetero as possible. 

Which might be why Jordan’s barely saying shit about _Richie_. It’s all directed at Eddie, which pisses Richie off more, because Richie keeps telling Jordan to shut up, but Eddie isn’t slinging pussy jokes back at Jordan, he’s playing dumb and getting Jordan to explain his comments (ex. “Sorry, what’s a glory hole?” or “You expect me to put my _what_ _where_?”). So every moment is dragged out longer, putting Richie on edge and working Jordan up to explode. He’s watching Jordan’s neck vein pulse with increasing concern, and he pulls Eddie closer to his side every time Jordan looks at them.

So by the time the lawyer’s getting plucked out of a porta potty by the T-Rex, Jordan says, “You two wanna get a room?”

“You wanna suck my fucking dick, Jordan?” Richie spits. 

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No, because I don’t wanna get herpes.” Someone pauses the movie. “Can you just shut the fuck up? Are you physically capable of not making a homophobic joke for five minutes straight? Because I’ve lived with you a year and a half and I’ve never heard this much heinous bullshit come out of you.”

Jordan scoffs. “Oh, sorry, am I offending you and your fag friend?”

Eddie flinches.

“Jordan!” Clara shouts.

Richie leaps to his feet, despite his knees feeling like jelly. He can barely hear past his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “Yeah, because you’re being offensive, dumbass! He’s my best friend, shut the fuck up, or—”

“Or what?” Jordan gets up as well, and he’s half a foot taller than him. “What do you think you’re gonna do?”

“Sit your ass down,” Clara says as they both ignore her.

Richie flexes his shaking hands. He doesn't want to fight, but he’s running out of ideas on how to shut Jordan up. This is how it always went down in high school—Richie flapping his mouth off until he got his lights knocked out.

“We’re just trying to watch a movie.” He jerks a finger at Jordan. “What do _ you _ want, huh? You wanna fight?”

Eddie jumps up and jerks Richie back by the shoulder. He makes Richie look at him. “You’re not getting in a fucking fight, Richie. You can’t afford new glasses.”

He says it like a joke, but his fingers are digging in hard enough to leave a bruise. And his grip says _ it’s not worth it, sit down, don’t get hurt because of me_.

Jordan’s cocking his fist anyway.

Richie’s about to get his ass beat in his own house.

“Jordan Lincoln Gregorio!” Clara brings out his full name, and she’s standing on the couch to meet his eye. “Get. Your ass. Outside. _ Now._”

“Babe—” he tries to argue.

She grabs him by the sleeve and drags him to the back patio. She slams the door so hard that it pops back open thanks to the shitty lock.

Richie’s breath comes out in a shudder. Shit. _ Shit _ . He shouldn’t—why’d he do that? Why’d he curl up around Eddie all night? It was stupid. It wasn’t safe—just because they’d done it at the party with a bunch of strangers didn’t mean it was okay to do at his house. He _ lives _ here. He’ll face consequences here. 

He swallows hard.

Eddie moves his hand to squeeze his bicep. Richie shrugs him off. He’s fine. This is fine. He’s still breathing, Jordan hadn’t touched Eddie, it’s fine. 

Richie grabs a fresh beer.

Lucas releases a puff of smoke. “What the fuck was that?”

“Some vibes got real harshed,” one of his friends replies.

Eddie takes a pull on his inhaler.

Richie looks at him incredulously, but before he can speak, Clara’s voice drifts through the half-closed back door as she gets louder.

“…no reason for that. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“It’s not me, babe, it’s them—”

“Them _ what _? Richie’s always a dick. You think it’s funny the rest of the time, why’re you being an asshole now?”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Have some common fucking sense. I said Richie’s friend was cute, not that I wanted to dick him down. Do you have to be this much of a jealous fucking troglodyte all the time?”

He mumbles something Richie doesn’t catch.

“No, troglodyte is not from the fucking movie, Jordan!” Her voice reaches a pitch only dogs should be able to hear. “Look, they’re not gay, and even if they were, that doesn’t give you the right to ruin everybody’s night by going off on them. Just go away.”

“I live here.”

“That’s not my problem!” Clara comes back in and slams the door shut properly before locking it.

“Hey!” Jordan pounds on the door.

Okay. Richie takes another sip of his beer. Okay, so it wasn’t all about their cuddling. Jordan was jealous, because he’s an idiot. Great. That’s a separate problem, certainly not Richie’s. And perhaps one that will leave when Eddie does.

Clara glides across the room and plucks a joint out of Lucas’ fingers before flopping onto the couch.

Eddie frowns at the door Jordan’s hitting. “I don’t trust the structural integrity—”

“I’ll get him his coat, he’s got friends down the street,” Lucas says, lurching to his feet. “He doesn’t deserve these groovy dinos.”

Lucas, in his defense, is extremely high.

Richie would like to join Lucas in being extremely high, but he has that stupid rehearsal tomorrow, as if that’s any reason not to get shit-faced. Clara sure doesn’t care. 

She’s re-lighting the joint in her mouth. To Richie she says, “Sorry about him. Not that I need to apologize for him, like I’m—_ he _ can apologize.”

They both know he will not.

“It’s fine,” Richie lies.

They settle into their seats, and when Lucas returns he turns the movie back on. Richie tenses for follow up questions or stares, but they’re all mostly tossing chips around and mumbling about dinosaurs. Because they’re fucking toasted, and must have only the faintest grasp of what just happened.

Richie chugs the rest of his beer. It all felt really bad, but it’s not, right? It’s okay. It’s like nothing even happened. Jordan just ruined his night for no reason.

He sneaks one hit from Clara and relaxes against the couch. 

Eddie sits next to him, free and untangled from Richie’s arm as he leans forward on his knees to watch the movie. Richie stares at his profile instead of the screen, imagining his fingers could replace his eyes where they trace Eddie’s jawline, the slope of his nose, the curve of his mouth.

Fuck, he’s already too high for this.

Eddie catches him watching him, and Richie jerks his attention back to the TV.

He eases closer to mutter in Richie’s ear, “You good?”

His breath smells like wine and mints. 

“Yeah,” Richie says after a minor delay between his brain and his mouth. “You?”

“Mm hm.” His hand lands on Richie’s knee. “I got a big man strong man to defend my honour—”

He blushes down to his chest. “Kaspbrak, I swear to god—”

“Yeah? What?” He smirks at him, face cast blue by the TV. “You wanna fight me?”

He wants to kiss him on the mouth. He wants to get so fucked up that they can make out and pretend to forget about it again. He wants, he wants, he wants…

It takes everything in him not to put his fading adrenaline into lurching forward and falling into Eddie.

Eddie’s smirk fades and he turns back to the TV. He leaves his hand on Richie’s knee.

During their senior year, whenever they brainstormed about what their futures would entail, Richie got too self-conscious to suggest picking colleges close to each other. Even hinting that the other losers’ choices might play a part in his decision-making process seemed like a pussy move, since no one else was acting like it mattered. 

So he hated talking about college, because he still didn’t know if he was going, and he had the vague idea to move to the same city as one of them and get a shitty job and just _ live _ . But his dad would never fork over his meager college fund for _ that_, so he flipped through brochures like the rest of the losers. 

When Richie got itchy with the imminence of separation while the rest of them debated pros and cons of colleges, he’d preemptively brag about how many hookups he’d have, even though the more he got turned down by high school girls, the more weirdly relieved he got. 

He wasn’t too keen on dressing up nice, combing him his hair, pretending to have manners while asking benign, non-inflammatory questions about her day. That’s how it sounded when Mike described the dates he went on. Unbelievably boring. But Richie had to keep asking, right? Maybe if a girl said yes he’d end up enjoying himself. 

“So what do expect to change in college?” Mike asked when Richie pretended to snore through his latest date recap. “Do you expect older girls to skip the formality of a date?”

The six of them were hanging out in Bill’s basement; Stan’s family had already moved, and Bill’s would be next. Despite their decline in numbers, they’d all gotten a bit too big for the clubhouse. 

“Eddie’s mom sure did.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Eddie didn’t look up from a college essay he was writing at the coffee table. He couldn’t work on any college stuff at home without his mom guilt tripping him about his plans to leave her.

Richie stretched out across the loveseat. “And I’m still not sold on the whole college thing.”

That got Eddie’s full attention. He poked a pen at him. “You’re _ going _ to college.” 

“You gonna make me, Spaghetti?”

“I will fill out your applications and forge your signature.” 

It was a threat, but Richie threw his hands up in relief. “Thank god! My hand was cramping.”

“You sure that’s not from jerking it?” Eddie shot back.

“No, your mom does that for me.”

Bev shook her head in mock disbelief. “Yeah, Richie, why would you ever suffer through a boring date with a girl when you’ve got all the entertainment you need with Eddie here?”

Richie didn’t have a response to that. Like a train skipping tracks, Bev put them on a whole different conversation. He couldn’t admit he _ would _ rather go for dinner and a movie with Eddie than a girl. That didn’t sound… right. 

Bill jumped in to save him from replying. “Hey, he already got rejected by every girl at school. What’s he supposed t-t-to do? Get a pen pal?”

Richie rolled his eyes, but that was as good an excuse as any—he’d _ tried _ chasing after girls. Wasn’t his fault it didn’t work.

“Wait, Eddie,” Bev said suddenly. Richie dreaded her next words, but it was only, “Will you fill out my college apps too? My aunt wants me to apply to at least seven schools, and I don’t think that’s physically possible.”

“I’ll help you, Bev,” Ben offered kindly.

And they returned to the original topic of college, which was barely better than talking about Richie’s lack of dating experience.

Bill kept casting glances at him to check on him, which made Richie want to shrink into nothing. He hated that Bill knew what set him off, which jokes wouldn’t be swallowed and spat back with a good-natured laugh like normal. It meant Bill knew Richie better than he could admit to himself. 

Rehearsal the next morning is more intense than anticipated, possibly because Richie hadn’t paid attention to anything the prof had said about it.

Clara looks like shit when she shows up half an hour late, which Richie gladly tells her. She flips him off. He would’ve woken her up if she’d slept at the house like normal.

For a second there, Richie was expecting Clara to take the couch instead of staying in Jordan’s room, forcing Eddie and Richie to share his bed. But she went home, and the couch was free, so he had no choice but to take it, even after a long, stretched-out moment where Richie thought Eddie was going tell him to sleep with him anyway. It didn’t happen.

“You didn’t leave your buddy at home, did you?” Clara asks as she falls in step with him for the dance number.

Richie points into the audience, empty save for Eddie nose-deep in a textbook three rows away from the stage.

“That’s not the choreography, Mr. Tozier!” the prof calls over the music.

Richie suppresses the urge to flip him off too.

It’s nearly lunch when Bryant slips on the stage (which to be fair feels covered in their sweat) and skids his bare knee across the slick surface.

“Son of a bitch!” 

“Eds,” Richie calls. Eddie looks up, pen hanging off his bottom lip. “Medic.”

He hurries to the stage and pops antibacterial wipes and a bandage from his fanny pack while the teacher announces with a put-upon sigh that they can take an early lunch.

Eddie frowns down at Bryant. “How are you not wearing knee pads?” He looks around. “How is everyone not wearing knee pads?”

“Oh fantastic, you’re both annoying,” Bryant says. Then he winces as he disinfects his own knee.

Eddie puts his hands on his hips. “I can take my shit back.”

Bryant shakes his head. “My apologies. This skinned knee isn’t mixing well with my hangover.”

Eddie shoots Richie a smug look, like _ See? Aren’t you glad you didn’t get shit-faced last night? _

Half the class does look mildly to extremely hungover, and completely miserable. 

“You need a condom?” Richie offers to Bryant, because like hell is he gonna thank Eddie for good advice on not drinking. “My dude’s got condoms in that fanny pack, too.”

“You don’t have to tell very goddamn person we meet that I—”

Some classmate Richie hasn’t bothered to remember the name of stops. “Oh, do you have a spare condom, actually?”

Eddie reaches wordlessly into his fanny pack and hands the guy a condom.

The guy grins like he won the lottery and walks away. “Sweet!”

Eddie heaves a put-upon sigh as Richie laughs. “You don’t understand how often that happens, Richie. I have to restock _ constantly_.”

Richie laughs harder.

“I’m not even gonna ask,” Bryant mumbles.

Richie’s exhausted by the end of the day, and dreading doing it all again tomorrow.

“Everything hurts, Eddie,” he whines when he sinks onto the couch at home.

“You should’ve stretched more.”

“That’s what I always said to your mom.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and gets him an ice pack before they settle in to play video games. Jordan is nowhere to be seen.

That night, the stairs intimidate Richie more than the loose springs in the couch, so even when Eddie pity-offers him the bed, Richie declines. 

But he doesn’t get to pass out into a well-deserved slumber at the end of his day.

His nightmares are filled with his musical theatre teacher transforming from man to clown and back again. He’s putting on a show that he demands Richie to be the sole star of. Opening night’s in the sewers, and the teacher-clown has his rows of needle-teeth hanging above Eddie’s face threatening to clamp down if Richie misses a step. Eddie’s arm is broken and he’s wailing like he did in Niebolt. It’s throwing Richie off so that he can barely hear the music that’s speeding up to a pace he’s fighting to keep up with. He doesn’t think he’s tripped up yet, but the clown’s teeth are closing in on Eddie’s face—

Richie jerks awake with a scream that turns his throat raw. 

It’s dark and he’s not in his bed and someone from above yells for him to shut the fuck up. He forgets where he is for a second as his chest heaves, cold sweat dripping down his back. Then he remembers he’s home, in student housing, with people who’ve fucking had it with his screaming. 

He holds back a whimper and slaps around frantically for his glasses as he hears footsteps thundering down the stairs.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry,” he croaks out. “I’ll be quiet, I’m—”

“Richie.” Eddie appears blurrily in front of him. He cradles Richie’s wet face. “You’re okay.”

His hand curls around Eddie’s wrist. “Eds?”

“I’m okay, too,” he whispers.

Richie shudders with relief and throws his arms around him. Eddie sits down and hums gently, stroking his hair. Richie buries his face in his neck to muffle a sob; the comfort almost makes him break down harder. 

It’s easier though, coming back to reality with Eddie solid in front of him, his chin resting on his head. Richie quiets quickly, and then he’s just being hugged in the dark. He could stay like this all night.

“C’mon,” Eddie says after a minute. His thumb brushes his ear. “I’ll get you a glass of water and then we’ll go to bed.”

“Okay,” he agrees into his shirt.

When Richie stands he’s reminded of his various aches and pains, so Eddie helps him climb the stairs. Richie puts as much of his weight on him as possible.

“Richie, you’re _ heavy_,” Eddie complains with Richie draped over him. 

“You’re an angel,” Richie mutters his reply.

Eddie crawls into bed after him, looping his arm around Richie’s waist as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. Richie feels small and big all at the same time, like with Eddie holding him so gently, he’s everything. 

The rhythm of Eddie’s heartbeat against his back feels like _ I love you, I love you, I love you. _

Richie opens his mouth, and silence comes out.

He sleeps until morning in Eddie’s arms, and the whole experience feels like a dream when he wakes up.

They leave the house the next morning before Jordan even wakes up, so there’s no opportunity for him to comment on their sleeping arrangements.

The second day of rehearsal is more of the same, except Richie’s muscles scream with each move he makes, and every time he looks at the teacher he expects to see a clown. Every time he looks at Eddie, he wishes they were back home cuddling in bed and ignoring the world. Then he sees his teacher again and his chest lurches like it’s trying to escape from an inevitable terror.

So really, if he’s pressed, he’d say the second day of rehearsal is actually dramatically worse than the first.

Eddie doesn’t complain when Richie smokes on the way back to his place after rehearsal, even though he’s tucked right into Richie’s side. When he’s not there his chest is starting to feel concave, empty, as if it’s missing something. So any reminder that Eddie is leaving soon dampens Richie’s mood even further, but he can’t really defend that. Obviously Eddie needs to go home. Richie just wishes they’d had a better time.

He imagines Colby asking how Eddie’s weekend was and Eddie having to respond with, ‘Oh, y’know. Had to sit around watching amateur musical theatre all weekend, got woken up in the middle of the night by Richie’s nightmare, got called a fag. Fun stuff.’ 

When they’re back in Richie’s room and Eddie packs up his inhaler with the rest of his things, Richie’s sharper than he maybe has to be.

“Why the fuck do you have that?”

Eddie hesitates. “I need it.”

“For what?”

“My asthma.”

“You don’t have asthma.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Did a doctor _ prescribe _ that to you?” Richie calls him out on his shit. “How did you even get one?”

He ducks his head. “My mom sent me my old prescription.”

“Your mother?”

“Yeah, you know, your girlfriend?”

Richie doesn’t acknowledge the joke. “I thought you weren’t talking to your mother.”

“I wasn’t. I am now.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my fucking mom.” 

Richie bites his tongue. If he keeps prodding, they’ll have a Real Fight, which he refuses to engage in right before Eddie leaves. “Whatever.”

He checks under the duvet to make sure Eddie didn’t forget, like, a sock or something, even though Eddie’s too organized to forget his things. It’s always been Richie leaving stuff behind, ever since they were kids.

When it’s clear Richie’s given up on arguing, Eddie rolls the inhaler between his hands. With a great deal of care choosing his words, he says, “So, before I go, I actually need to talk to you about something.”

_ Talk about the kiss, is it about the kiss, that time we kissed? _ rolls around in Richie’s head just like every other time this weekend Eddie’s stopped himself from saying something.

It’s not gonna be about the kiss, Richie’s sure of it. Unless…

“I was waiting for the right time, but…” Eddie chews the inside of his cheek.

“This weekend’s been kinda fucked,” Richie finishes for him. 

“No, it’s been fine. I just…”

Maybe it’s just Richie who’s felt off-kilter since the Jordan thing, then. And the nightmare. And from wanting to kiss Eddie so badly his body feels like a walking bruise. Teetering on the edge of leaning into something he’s not ready for.

“After I finish this year,” Eddie says haltingly, “I’m taking some time off school.”

So not the kiss. Richie’s not disappointed. Somehow he’s not relieved, either.

“After all that time you spent on homework?” Richie asks in disbelief.

He shrugs. He doesn’t seem excited about it. Maybe he ran out of money.

“Where you gonna go?” 

Faster than he can stop himself, Richie has the idea of Eddie moving to New York. Richie already wants to find a new place to live next year after Jordan—he and Eddie could go in on a shitty apartment. No more two-hour train rides just to see him.

He almost misses Eddie whispering, “Derry.”

Richie’s blood freezes in his veins. “Pardon?”

He looks down at his inhaler. “My mom’s sick.”

That gives him whiplash. “Why do you—she didn’t even have your number, how is she doing any of this?”

“She sent me a letter.”

“And you read it?”

“Yeah, I read her fucking letter.”

Richie shakes his head. None of this is fitting together right. “You can’t move back to Derry.”

“Why not?”

For a hundred fucking reasons that he shouldn’t have to explain, but the first one he gives is, “Because I’m never going back there.”

Eddie blinks furiously and looks out the window. “I’m not asking you to.”

“So you’re just never see me again?” He tacks on quick, “See any of us again?”

“It’s just until she’s better—”

“She’s not even sick, Eddie, what the fuck?” He tries to keep his voice level.

“What if she is?”

“Then the bitch dies!” He fails. It’s nearly a shout. 

Eddie’s jaw snaps shut, and he’s seething even though he has no reason to. _ He’s _ the one who’s spewing bullshit, crap that doesn’t make sense and _ won’t _ make sense because he knows better than this. 

Richie is so far gone already. This isn’t a conversation, it’s a disaster movie, and he’ll do anything to stop this plane from crashing, this tornado from sweeping the house—this fucking _ tragedy _ from occurring.

“She’s manipulating you,” Richie says, “like she always does. You’re not stupid—”

“No, I’m not,” Eddie snaps. “You don’t think I’ve considered she’s lying? But what if she isn’t? Then she dies all alone? Am I supposed to be okay with that?”

_ Yes. _ He doesn’t say it.

Richie drags his hand through his hair. He tries a different tactic. It makes his voice shake. “Did you forget what goes on there? In _ Derry?_ How people live in Derry? What they did, what they’ll do—you think you can live in Derry? You gonna die in Derry?"

“Stop saying Derry!” he shouts.

“Well, if you’re living there, you better get used to it!”

“God, you’re such an asshole.” Eddie’s eyes are big, too big, and shining, and refusing to let Richie go. “It’s not like I _ want _ to go.”

“So don’t!”

“We can’t all only do what we want all the time, Richie.” He crosses his arms, shoulders hiked up to his ears. He looks so wrinkled and tense that Richie wants to flatten him out with an iron—steady him, calm his nerves. Keep him safe. But Eddie won’t let him do that.

Richie’s voice is small when he says, “But I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll still call.” 

“If your mom lets you.”

It’s not just that he’s gonna miss him, it’s that Richie is scared of that town. He’s scared for Mike still living there, he’s terrified he’ll ever need to return, and he won’t be able to breathe right knowing that Eddie is trapped there with his abusive mother. 

Suddenly his nightmare feels like a fucking prophecy.

“What if it comes back?” Richie asks so quiet that he’s not sure it’s anything more than a trembling thought in the back of his mind.

Eddie’s blurry even though Richie’s got his glasses on.

He wipes his tears away just in time to watch Eddie take a pull of his inhaler.

Anger explodes through Richie all over again. He rips the inhaler from his grasp. “You don’t have asthma, your mom’s not dying, and you’re not going back there!”

Eddie snags it back from him, leaving scratch marks down Richie’s palm. “Why the fuck do you think you get to tell me what to do?”

“What if it comes back?” Richie shouts in his face.

“What if I contracted ebola on the train ride here?” He shoves his chest. “What if I get black lung from your mould?” He shoves him again, and then his hands curl to fists at his sides. “What if you develop alcoholism? I know the what-ifs, Richie. My mom taught me how to make them up real good. I don’t need your help.”

Richie steps back, wipes his nose on his sleeve. “’S not what I—”

“Whatever.” He shrugs jerkily. “I’m finishing out the semester still. And the school says I can defer a year or two if I can provide her doctor’s notes.”

As if his mom will ever let him out of her clutches a second time. 

“I’m not dying in Derry,” Eddie says bitterly.

Richie shuts up. 

Eddie knows. He knows the threat lingering in that town, and he knows better than Richie what his mom is capable of. Richie repeating it all won’t do anything other than upset them both.

It’s just that his life is falling apart all over again, is all.

Richie has a cigarette in his mouth on the walk to drop off Eddie at the train station, but he doesn’t light it.

They stop on the sidewalk when they get there.

It’s fucking freezing. Richie’s shoulders are at his ears to hide from the wind because he’s still not wearing a scarf or a hat or anything. Eddie’s all wrapped up like usual, with just his eyes and nose visible. 

They’re both waiting for something. 

Richie meets his gaze then drops it. He mutters, “I’m not gonna develop alcoholism.”

Eddie tugs his scarf down so Richie can see his mouth. “What about lung cancer?” 

He tucks the unlit cigarette behind his ear with a short sigh. “Why are you worried about me becoming an alcoholic?”

“Because it really seems like you’re self-medicating with alcohol. And weed.”

_“You’re _ gonna talk to _ me _ about self-medicating—”

“At least I use actual medicine—”

“Then take a Valium. Your inhaler doesn’t treat your fucking anxiety—”

“I need to go, Richie,” he snaps. “Anything else you wanna diagnose me with?”

He looks away, stomping his feet to ward off the cold. He wracks his brain for convincing words, a good argument. He’d come up empty the whole walk here. He can’t even shake out a joke. 

“No. Fine. Bye.”

Eddie lets go of his suitcase handle and half-lifts his mittened hands toward Richie. As if it’s a question.

Richie yanks him into a desperate hug—too tight, probably, but neither of them complain. It’s the warmest Richie’s been in half an hour, but it’s not enough. He’s still chilled to the bone, and Eddie’s wrapped up like the Michelin man against him, and he’s _ leaving_.

“I gotta go,” Eddie mumbles against Richie’s chest.

So Richie lets him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! All aboard the angst train, am I right?  
The next chapter is gonna be Eddie POV, and it's a short one, so it'll probably be out during this week, and back to Richie next weekend.  
Please let me know your thoughts, comments give me a will to live. Thanks for reading!!


	9. Interlude: Eddie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eddie POV :) This chapter got longer than I expected it to be.

Eddie is so sure it’s pointless wondering what Richie’s thinking at any given time. Why Richie did this, why he did that, why he kissed him, if he’ll do it again. He’s straight. And Eddie’s straight. So what’s—his throat tightens—what’s the use of wondering?

Richie does what he wants when he wants, with no regard for the consequences.

So when they kiss at the rave, Eddie doesn’t think, either. He’d seen guys together there; he’d almost yelled at them—it wasn’t safe! Didn’t they know people could see them? But nothing happened to those strangers. Richie must’ve noticed it too—the lack of reaction drawn from two men kissing at this place.

That’s as far as Eddie goes into deciphering why Richie puts his big hands on him and holds him so tight. Why he presses his chapped, smokey lips to Eddie’s, why he sticks his tongue in his mouth, why he makes him feel hot all over. Makes him feel wanted—no,  _ needed _ , like Richie needs to kiss Eddie to breathe… 

Eddie’s been all over him the whole night, but he can’t help it, not when he’s been drinking rum like it’s juice. He’s languid and warm and  _ needs _ Richie right back.

And then they’re walking home and Eddie asks a question that has every chance to ruin him, but it doesn’t. Because Richie hasn’t been dating. And the resignation in his reply tells Eddie everything he needs to know, which he kind of hates.

He wants Richie to be happy, but… there’s this little part of him that’s always been quietly relieved when girls turn Richie down. He’s never known what to do with it.

Richie passes out in Eddie’s bed, and why does he do that? Who knows.

Why does Eddie crawl in after him? Tradition, he supposes.

The next morning Richie acts like he doesn’t remember, and it’s still a waste of time guessing at Richie’s reasoning for anything.

Even if Eddie’s gotten pretty good at it through the years. Like in senior year, when Richie got restless talking about colleges because he was afraid of leaving Derry and the losers. But he had to leave, none of them could stay, except Mike, even though he  _ shouldn’t _ stay. Richie didn’t like any of that, which was obvious to Eddie, though not to Richie’s parents, who kept complaining about his lack of motivation but weren’t doing anything to help him

That’s why Eddie sat Richie down himself and made him choose a college. Helped him fill out his application, too, because he wouldn’t have done it on his own. (Richie has this thing about forms, he thinks they’re boring. Which they are, but their purpose isn’t entertainment—they’ve had the same argument a lot.)

So Eddie’s a bit better at figuring out what’s going on in Richie’s head than the average person.

He figured that they’d quit kissing as kids because Richie didn’t want to, or they’d grown out of it, or the clown spoiled it like It spoiled any hope at a carefree childhood.

None of that explains why Richie does it  _ again _ .

Thinking about Richie pressed up against him makes Eddie itch with want. His head feels tight during their breakfast together, and he doesn’t know if it’s a hangover or the pressure from keeping everything bottled up when Richie hasn’t said a damn thing.

Eddie’s used to it. Kissing as kids hadn’t been nearly as intense, but it made his chest burn the same. He used to pop antacids like candy, certain he was suffering from some kind of chronic heartburn. 

He thinks he knows better now. He still picks up a bottle of Tums on his next grocery trip, just in case.

Colby saw them kissing and Eddie wants to die. He thinks he’s gonna. Or he’s gonna get murdered. Either way, he’s not long for this world.

Eddie freaks out on him, and he feels bad, because Colby opened the conversation saying that he himself was bisexual, and now Eddie’s having a crisis in Colby’s dorm room because he said that Eddie and Richie have really good energy as a couple. Eddie has to use his fucking inhaler. He doesn’t know why Colby keeps trying to be friends with him, he’s a goddamn mess of a person.

And he’s not! Dating! Richie!

Colby tells him to hush, dude, shooting a worried look at his closed door. Eddie fully breaks down, because someone  _ saw them _ , and why had they done that in public, they should’ve waited until they were home, safe in his bed—and he cries more because  _ he shouldn’t want Richie in his bed _ .

Being confronted about it, being assumed to be dating a man— _ Richie _ —blows right through Eddie’s carefully constructed dismissal of the situation. Because it’s pointless to wonder why Richie does anything, but why is Eddie giving himself a pass? Why has Eddie gone to sleep every night since then thinking about Richie’s lips?

It’s more than Colby signed up for, but he still gets Eddie a glass of water and tries to calm him down out of his hiccuping panic attack.

It’s all so searingly awkward, and Eddie blames Colby for bringing it up, and Richie for kissing him, and himself for liking it so much.

Does it even matter? Richie doesn’t remember. Or he’s pretending he doesn’t. Either way, it’s the same result. They’re acting like nothing’s changed, just like they used to. 

It grates on Eddie in a new way now. He tries to forget about it, because it’s scary and painful and annoying. He tells Colby this when he checks up on him a week later. Colby laughs, because he’s an asshole. He also tells Eddie it won’t hurt forever, which has yet to be proved true.

But the questions he’s running circles around becomes less stabbing and frantic like when Colby first brought it up, and more like an ever-lasting bruise. A soft pain, one Eddie can live with.

Richie’s not in front of him every day to stare at; Eddie can’t spend hours trying to get a glimpse through his big forehead into his skull to pick apart the machinations of his whirring brain.

With the distance between them, Eddie can trick himself into forgetting about the giant fucking elephant in the core of his being for whole minutes at a time.

But he  _ aches _ at Christmas, so he talks to Ben, because he’s an annoying romantic, and also they’ve both had too much rum and eggnog.

“Ben, if I ask you something will you promise not to be weird?” Eddie asks. It’s a whisper, because he has no other way to regulate his volume after this much alcohol.

They’re in the sun room where they’re sharing a pull out couch for the night, and they’re sitting up, wrapped in blankets to fend off the cold.

Ben turns to face him, round cheek pressed against the back of the couch. “Sure.”

He drops his gaze to the blanket tassels draped across his knees. “Have you ever kissed a guy?” Eddie’s eyes dart to Ben and then away again, but a slow smile is spreading across Ben’s face for some reason.

“No,” he says simply. “Have you?”

Which is a sensible response, but Eddie still balks. “I—uh—maybe.”

“Maybe like you maybe kissed a guy, or maybe like you don’t wanna tell me?” And it’s not mean, or even teasing. It’s soft. Considerate. So much about Ben’s inherent nature makes Eddie feel safe.

“The second one,” Eddie says quietly. “And I don’t know… I just don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” Ben says. 

“It’s okay?”

He shrugs his big shoulders. “Sure. You don’t need to know everything, you know.”

Which floors Eddie for a solid minute.

Because Eddie wants to know. He wants to know  _ why _ and  _ if _ and  _ how _ . 

“But what if… I do?” Eddie asks, and he’s almost speaking in riddles now, pulling half-formed questions out of his brain and presenting them to Ben for review.

He doesn’t seem to mind. “What? Kiss guys?”

He nods, face heating. “And what if I’m…?”

Ben grins again, and it lights up his face like the star on top of his mom’s tree. “An incredible friend? An excellent gift-giver? A delight to have at parties?”

Eddie looks out the window, but it’s dark out, so it’s just himself staring back at him, next to Ben falling asleep on the couch. He’s chewing on his lip, which he tries not to do—infection and bacteria, you know. He looks nervous, which isn’t new. Even in his second year of independence at college, he has trouble seeing himself as anything other than a little boy under his mother’s thumb—and fuck, he doesn’t want to think about his mother right now.

“What if I’m that and more?” Eddie eventually says.

“Would you like help testing it?”

“What?”

“We could kiss,” Ben offers like a question, and laughter sputters out of Eddie.

“No. Why?”

“Why not?” He’s suddenly drunkenly offended. “We’re friends, aren’t we? What’s a kiss between friends?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I’m not kissing any more friends, Ben.”

Which is a detail too many. He freezes in place.

Ben’s forehead wrinkles. “Not Bev?” More a statement than a question.

“No…”

“Is kissing a guy different than kissing a girl?” Ben asks, thankfully not listing all the losers in sequence. Eddie doesn’t know if he could lie to Ben about this.

“I’ve never kissed a girl.”

“Well it’s nice,” Ben says. “Is kissing a guy nice?”

Eddie sighs, wrapping his legs around his knees to protect his chest where warmth spreads like a bruise. “Yeah. It’s real nice, Ben.”

He pouts. “Well now I want a kiss.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and pulls him in by the back of the neck, dropping a kiss on his forehead. “Happy?”

He grins, chubby cheeks a rosy red. “Yes! I love you, Eddie.”

“Love you too, Ben,” he murmurs as Ben jostles further under the blankets and rests his head on a pillow.

He feels better, he tells himself. Which is true. But he also feels exposed and tender, and he wishes he were a little more like Ben so that feeling this way didn’t make him absolutely terrified.

Speaking of… he hasn’t told any of the losers about the business with his mother. 

After ignoring her correspondence for months and only sending a standard biweekly letter to assure her he’s not dead, she sends him seven letters in a week, so he opens one to prevent future, more dramatic attempts at contact.

This feels like a mistake even as he’s doing it, which proves to be true, as it prompts weeks of attempted negotiations between them. He considers asking Mike to check on her, but he doesn’t want to put him through that torture. Eddie keeps the impending doom to himself, in case it all somehow blows over. He’s really,  _ really _ hoping his mom will give it up soon. 

Because she’s lying. He’s almost sure of it.

His mother’s claimed sickness and his inescapable thoughts of Richie are braided together, one linking to the next as he argues with his mother on a campus pay phone so she doesn’t get his dorm room’s phone number.

He can’t go, he has school (he has Richie). She can’t make him, he’s a grown man (who doesn’t want to leave Richie). He’s sure it’s hard for her, but it would be hard for Eddie too, to uproot his whole life (and for Richie to not to have him so close).

He worries about Richie more than his mom. Richie hides what he thinks he should hide, which doesn’t work when Eddie can see the emotions playing out on his face, but over the phone it’s tougher to distinguish. Maybe he’s good. Maybe he’s drinking and smoking an appropriate amount for a college student. He sounds okay.

Eddie’s mom sounds worse. Weaker and raspier as the weeks go on, and what if she’s not faking? That one thread of doubt drops him closer and closer in agreeing to move back to Derry, like sinking slowly into the depths of hell.

It’s easy to forget his decision when he’s visiting Richie in New York. Eddie can barely breathe that weekend, but he knows it’s not asthma, or heartburn, or black mould (it might still partially be black mould). Every single thought he has relates to Richie smiling at him, or Richie’s arm around him, or talking Richie down from throwing hands with his fucking roommate.

Jordan doesn’t like Eddie from the second he gets there, but Eddie doesn’t care why. He’d told Clara he was nice, but he’s not really—he’s polite. Selectively. And some meathead staring Eddie down like he’s a bug caught on his shoe deserves neither his patience nor his silence, no matter how many gay jokes he makes trying to shut Eddie up. Jordan doesn’t know shit. Eddie’s not scared of him.

Richie on the other hand… he’s trembling by the time Clara drags Jordan outside. Richie pretends he’s not affected, obviously. Eddie goes with it, cracks a joke to make him feel better.

Gets a little too close, probably. But how can he not?

The look Richie gives him when Eddie touches his knee— _ god _ . Eddie’s head goes heady under the weight of his gaze. Richie doesn’t say a word, but he burns his thoughts into Eddie all the same; if they were alone, if his roommate hadn’t just yelled, if they were a little drunker—if everything were just a smidge to the left of where it is— they’d tumble together into a kiss they couldn’t climb out of.

Eddie would be disappointed, except he knows exactly how this weekend’s gonna end, and doing something stupid would’ve just made it hurt more.

He tells Richie he’s going back to Derry, and Richie reacts like it’s a betrayal akin to Eddie ripping Richie’s still-beating heart from his chest. 

And Eddie doesn’t have to wonder why.

It’s a response specific to Richie; the other losers would have no reason to act like this. 

Bill wouldn’t beg him not to go. Ben wouldn’t keep searching for words to convince him to stay. Bev wouldn’t look at him with kicked puppy dog eyes shining with barely restrained tears. Mike wouldn’t get worked up enough to have them both yelling. Stan wouldn’t squeeze him at the bus station tight enough to break a rib.

None of them would go through all the stages of grief like Richie does.

Eddie knows, deep down, where Richie’s coming from.

It’s like a flat stone. Emblazoned across the top is BEST FRIEND in big, blinding letters. And he can’t flip it over to see what’s written on the other side, because the stone is plugging a hole, and he can’t know what will burst from himself if he picks it up.

So he acts like Richie’s just being a selfish ass. His last words that day are about Richie becoming an alcoholic, because he needs Richie to stop  _ looking _ at him like that, projecting his thoughts at him without saying a word.

Eddie wonders, for a heart-stopping second, what he’d do if Richie said one of the things they never say.

He isn’t given a reason to figure it out.

So his plan is still Derry. Which he can’t do, but he has to.

And he can’t leave Richie, but he has to do that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will just say it here: chubby Ben rights! Making him lose weight is a cop-out for maturing as a character @Mr. King and @Mr. Muschietti!!  
But anyway... hope you liked this dip into Eddie's head!! It would've been up sooner, but I got distracted by the holidays, and also I've started writing another fic where reddie meet before the second movie, and I'm having fun writing forty year old men who think they've never met (and then have sex). Hopefully will start posting that one as this fic wraps up.  
Please let me know your thoughts! Next chapter should be out this weekend.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Lotta good stuff in this one. We've got Stan, we've Bev, we've got Clara, if anyone cares.  
We're getting closer to the end, so Richie's gonna get sadder before it all gets better, but we will get there eventually!  
TW discussion of addiction, discussion of overdose (in a flashback, not a main character)

Richie picks up a bottle of rum on his way home from the train station, sips it during the walk to keep warm, and drinks enough of it to pass out when he climbs back into bed.

Monday he drinks and raids the house’s communal weed drawer and does not go to his classes.

Tuesday he’s awoken by the shrill ringing of his phone, and the shriller voice of Clara when he answers. They’re presenting in their improv class, she says, and she’s prepared some jumping off points they need to go over. Isn’t the point of improv to improvise, he asks, and she says she’ll improvise strangling him if he doesn’t show up today.

So he goes to school unshowered and hungover enough to actually technically still be drunk.

After their performance, some guys in the class praise Richie’s jokes, but complain about how much of a bummer Clara was. Clara had definitely carried him in their skit, but he goes to his next class instead of arguing. 

January air infiltrates his lungs and clings to his bones as he crosses campus between classes. He feels physically incapable of retaining warmth.

He feels like shit, but sitting in a lecture hall and pretending to take notes is easier than going home at this point. Maybe he should stay in the 24-hour study lounge tonight. It would give him a better chance of getting to classes tomorrow. He knows he won’t get out of bed to do this all again any time soon.

He wonders why it needs to be one or the other; stay forever or never come back. 

After his last class, Richie finds the nearest bathroom and heaves all the alcohol in his stomach into a toilet. He then continues using the stall to violently sob on the floor for the better part of thirty minutes.

When Richie exits to the hall, Bryant, the gay guy from his classes, of all people, stops him. He asks if Richie’s quite alright, because his eyes are all red. Richie says he’s just high, and Bryant says he doesn’t doubt that, but uhhh he clearly just had a breakdown in the bathroom. Richie walks away before he starts crying again.

He runs into Lucas on campus and they light up under the bleachers, just like Richie could never do in high school because he’d have gotten his ass beat for trying.

He’s still fucking _ freezing_.

He gets home somehow, eventually. He has a vague memory of mumbling about the perils of nostalgia to Lucas on the bus.

He passes out in his bed, and when he wakes it’s dark out.

When he slaps his hand around the floor looking for vodka, he lands on his phone instead.

He calls someone he knows won’t answer.

He’s shocked when he hears, “Patty?”

“Stan?” Richie croaks out.

“Oh, Tozier.”

“What time is it?” Richie asks.

“I mean, you called me. But it’s 2 am.” Stan sounds entirely awake.

“I’ve called you politely at 7 pm and you’re not there, but in the middle of the night you answer immediately?”

“I’ve got an essay due,” he says like it’s the most normal thing in the world. And it is. 

“Oh.” Richie sits up. His neck feels ill-suited to support the heaviness of his head. 

“Are you high?” Stan asks.

“Probably.” Everything’s blurry. Where are his glasses?

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, definitely—definitely not,” he manages as he lies back down and closes his eyes. “But back up. Who’s Patty?”

“I… have a girlfriend.” He’s so quietly proud to announce it that Richie gets a little choked up. “She keeps me busy, sorry I haven’t been around to answer your many calls.”

“Stan the Man,” Richie blubbers. “That’s incredible.”

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence for them. Maybe because Stan’s flat demeanour always crumpled into something gentle the second Richie’s eyes welled.

The night before Stan’s family moved away from Derry, Richie snagged a bottle of spiced rum from his parent’s alcohol cabinet for the losers to share, and Richie ended up weeping in Stan’s lap half the night, asking what were they gonna do now, without their Staniel the Maniel? Stan had cried too, but he blamed it on having to look at Richie’s ugly crying face. They’d both known better.

“Richie.” He’s less jokey-concerned and more insistent now. “Seriously, what the fuck is going on?”

Richie takes a shuddering breath and throws his duvet over his head. His house doesn’t have central heating; he’s still cold.

“Eddie’s moving back to Derry.”

Only the sound of Stan’s breathing reaches his ear.

Which is why he called Stan. Ben or Bev or somebody could’ve replied with optimistic lies like _ It might turn out okay _ or _ Maybe his mom will be different this time _ or _ It’s just until she dies, right? _

But Richie’s got enough of his own lies painting a mosaic in his head, he doesn’t need anyone else’s. He knows Stan won’t try to ease the severity of the situation.

“Why?” Stan finally asks. He doesn’t sound sure or proud now. He sounds like a kid again. 

Guilt pulls at Richie for ruining his night. Or week. Or if he’s like Richie, his whole fucking life.

“His mom says she’s real sick,” Richie says quietly, as if a whisper will make the news hurt less than a yell. “He’s leaving at the end of the semester to take care of her.”

“She’s lying,” Stan says.

“Yeah.”

That never made a difference before.

“Did you try to talk to him out of it?” Stan asks.

“If you mean have a huge fight about it, then yeah.”

Stan sighs. They’re quiet together for a while, which is uncharacteristic for the two of them. But there’s not really words for this, just a shared sense of gravity.

“I’m sorry,” Richie says when the silence balloons inside his chest big enough to explode. He rubs his eye. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to interrupt your essay about your girlfriend.”

“It’s not about my—whatever, don’t apologize. You’re obviously fucked up.”

“That’s—” He orders his mouth to say ‘rude’, but what comes out is, “true.”

“When’d he tell you?”

“Sunday.”

“You been fucked up since then?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because you sound like you’ve been fucked up for three days straight.”

“Whatever,” he grumbles. “What’s your girlfriend like?”

Stan speaks and Richie knows he’s got a softness cradling his features that only appeared when he talked about… birds, before. “She’s amazing, Richie.”

Richie immediately starts sobbing.

“Tozier, come on,” Stan says gently. 

He chokes on a breath. “Hey I’m just—I’m just relieved, you know?”

“Well no worries here, I _ am _ capable of rousing a girl’s interest,” he says dryly, trying to jerk Richie out of his funk.

But Richie is so far down. “No, I’m glad you’re happy. _ So _ happy, out there alone in the world. I worry about you…”

“You don’t need to.”

Richie knows. Stan doesn’t need his worry, and when he writes Mike asking how Derry’s treating him, he says it’s fine, it’s okay, don’t worry. And Eddie told him back on his dorm room floor not to worry like his mom, and the same thing in different words just a few days ago. Why did nobody want Richie’s care? After all they’d been through? 

Richie tugs on his hair hard enough to hurt. “He can’t go back there, Stan. He can’t.”

“I know,” he hums. “But you can’t—you can’t be mad at him, you know?”

He just pouts miserably in response.

Through the phone line there’s a little _ tap tap tap _ of a pencil before Stan says, “You wanna stay on the line while I finish my essay?”

“Uh huh.”

“On one condition, okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t kill off _ all _ your braincells. You can’t afford to lose much more.”

He wipes his tears on his pillow case. “Fuck off, Stan.”

“I mean it,” Stan says so solemnly that Richie wants to wriggle out of his skin. “You still have to take care of yourself. You know your mom…”

He does know. Richie knew what he meant the first time. It’s the same thing Eddie means every time he fusses over Richie’s drinking habits.

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie waves him off. “Get back to your essay.”

Richie racks up his phone bill listening to Stan’s pencil scratch paper and mumble softly about character motivations until he falls asleep.

His mom was away for six weeks when Richie was in the seventh grade. He didn’t notice until a week into her absence and he suddenly had no clean clothes. 

He checked his parent’s room, where his mom liked to lie down intermittently throughout the day, and found his dad going through her nightstand instead.

“Where’s mom?” Richie asked.

His dad barely looked at him. “She’ll be back in a few weeks.”

“But where is she now?”

“On a work trip.”

“So who’s gonna do my laundry?”

“Don’t you know how to do it?”

“Do _ you _?”

He sighed, tossing a yellow pill bottle in the trash. “Fine, I’ll teach you, and then you can do it yourself. Less stress for your mother.”

His dad did _ not _ have a fun time teaching Richie to do laundry.

None of it seemed strange until a week after that, when he had Bill, Stan and Eddie over after school while his dad was at work.

“When did your mom get a job?” Stan asked when Richie explained why there was nobody at home to stop them from making smores in the microwave.

“Huh?”

“You can’t be away on a work trip if you don’t have a job,” Stan said sensibly. “Isn’t she a stay-at-home mom?”

“Maybe she’s a secret spy,” Eddie suggested, neatly stacking graham crackers on his plate.

Bill shook his head slowly before Richie could really take Eddie’s suggestion on a tangent. “Has she b-b-been away since the night your dad made you stay at my house after he found her asleep in the b-b-bathroom?”

A pop sounded from the microwave. Melted marshmallows splattered across the glass.

“Is she _ dead _?” Richie gasped.

“No, oh my g-g-god. I heard my parents say she was going to a doctor.”

Eddie got up and stopped the microwave. “I’ve never had a doctor’s appointment that lasts weeks.”

After they left, Richie tore the house apart looking for evidence of… anything. The truth. He wasn’t a detective, so all he did was make a huge mess. His sister was away at college already, he didn’t have anyone else to bother until his dad came home.

When he did, Richie accosted him as soon he got through the door.

“Is mom dead?” he demanded. Scrawny arms crossed, hair a tangled mess because no one had told him to brush it in two weeks, and a year and a half before his first growth spurt. He was a force to be reckoned with.

“What?” His dad set his briefcase down and looked around the house. “Richie, why the hell does it look like a tornado came through here?”

“Mom doesn’t have a job!” Richie said. “She can’t go on a work trip!”

He rolled his eyes, loosening his tie. “Took you a week to figure that out, huh?”

Richie’s jaw dropped. “Did you _ kill _ her?”

He tossed a couch cushion back where it belonged instead of the floor where he found it. “No. Sit.”

“No.”

_ “Richie." _

He sat.

“Do you know what an addiction is, son?”

“Like a chocoholic?”

“Yes, except for prescription meds. Your mom mixed them with a bottle of wine and overdosed, so we decided to check her into a rehabilitation centre with doctors to take care of her and make her better. She’ll be back in a month. Do you understand?”

Richie nodded. He knew what all those words meant. The news and magazines talked about celebrities overdosing all the time. It always sounded like cool rock star stuff. 

And his dad didn’t seem worried, just stressed, as opposed to his usual aloofness. If anything, he was _ more _ alert than normal. That seemed good. But a six week stay at a drug hospital didn’t sound very fun at all.

“Overdosing… is bad?” Richie’s bangs flopped into his eyes as he tilted his head.

“Yes, Richie,” he replied with a condescension uncalled for when speaking to a seventh grader about drugs. “She could’ve died.”

“How?”

“Because drugs can kill you.”

“Eddie takes lots of drugs. His mom says they’re to _ stop _ him from dying.”

“Well I’m sure Mrs. Kaspbrak gets him to take the right amount.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure they’re not very strong, either.”

“Is mom more sick than Eddie?”

His dad paused as he unbuttoned his wrist cuff. “I suppose they’re just sick in different ways. You treat a cold differently than cancer, right?”

Richie lurched forward. “Does she have _ cancer _?”

“No, I just told you she’s addicted to pills! Are you even listening?”

He pouted, blinking rapidly as his eyes grew hot. This next month with just his dad and him in the house stretched like forever in his young mind. Whether his dad was aloof or alert, Richie was not going to like it.

Richie swallowed thickly. “Why’d you tell me she was on a work trip?”

“Because I didn’t want to have this conversation.”

Which Richie understood to mean: ‘Because I didn’t want to talk to you.’

So he helped his dad out and locked himself in his room.

After he told the guys about it, Eddie had a panic attack (that they called an asthma attack) about overdosing. 

Later that day, Richie’s dad got a very angry call from Eddie's mom accusing him of calling her son a drug addict.

Richie tries not to think about his mom while he’s home alone getting high and watching cartoons. He’s made it to the weekend after a pitifully sober last half of the week, so he deserves to relax.

Yesterday he’d called Eddie for the first time since he left. He thought maybe after a week Eddie would’ve found some common sense, but he was still set on moving. After that assertion, the conversation was irrescuably stilted. Richie stopped himself from saying what he wanted, and he didn’t know how to say anything else.

So he’s working on swallowing the fact that Eddie’s moving back to Derry, but that acceptance is lodged in his throat.

He somehow circumvents acceptance completely and circles back to thoughts he can’t keep having. The ones about Eddie’s big dark eyes, and his careful hands, and his rare sweet smile that’s imprinted on Richie’s heart like a tattoo. And the fact that it’s all being taken away. 

There’s an irritating ringing noise cutting through the musings he’s trying not to have, and it takes him a second to realize it’s the house phone.

He leans over and answers it, but when he puts it to an ear, he’s silent. No zippy greetings come to mind. After a moment, he just says, “Hullo?” 

“Richie.” Clara’s sharp voice cuts through his buzz like a chainsaw.

“Jordan’s not here,” Richie says, halfway to hanging up when she replies.

“Perfect. Can I come over?”

Richie blinks. “For… what?”

“I left my weed there.”

Richie eyes the bud on the table, trying to remember if he’d grabbed it from the communal weed drawer or the tin by front door that had been sitting there since _ Jurassic Park _. 

He exhales. “The stuff in the _ Sailor Moon _ cookie tin? I mean… you’re more than welcome to come share.”

“Damnit, Richie!”

He tries to speak through his laughter, “No, no, seriously. Come over. I’ll make nachos. My high eyes are always bigger than my mouth.”

“I can’t imagine anything bigger than your mouth.”

“Yeah, just my _ dick _—”

“Ugh, I’ll be there in ten. Fucker.”

So he waits, and she gets there, and she snatches the blunt out of his hand and immediately tells him to get in the kitchen for nachos. It’s the only thing he can make high, so it’s lucky she’s excited about them. She complains about Jordan the whole time he’s painstakingly dumping ground beef in the pan, and stirring it so it doesn’t burn. 

She keeps snapping her fingers and asking if he’s listening, and he’s not, but he is. Between her yammering and his concentration on cooking, he’s fully distracted from whatever he was spiralling about earlier.

Back on the couch, they’re sitting facing each other, Richie leaning against the arm rest. Clara is mowing down on nachos, second blunt in her hand.

“And he’s just—he’s so—” She jabs the blunt at Richie, the cherry of it blazing in time with her anger. “You know?”

“Boy howdy.” Richie agrees, picking the melted cheese off a tortilla chip. “We were all there last Friday.”

“_ God _, don’t remind me. That was so embarrassing.” She blinks hard. Her eyes are red. Were they red when she got here? Had she been been crying, or was she just high?

“Oh good, I’m glad everyone was embarrassed.”

She keeps talking. “I’ve had it with him, and his condescension, and his jealousy, and his—he’s just so stupid, you know?”

“You can do better,” he says, because he’s never understood how Jordan’s kept her locked down.

“Yeah?”

“Fuck, dude—_ yes _. Jordan’s a pile of mud and you’re a full-ass marble statue. Guy can’t wash his own underwear without shrinking it somehow.”

She snorts, a smile fluttering across her face.

He gestures with a soggy chip. “I’m serious, dude, you deserve better than Jordan. He looks like a Tonka truck.”

She erupts in laughter. “What does that _ mean _?”

He shrugs. “Look, we settle for what we think we deserve, right? But once you decide it’s bullshit,” he takes the smoke from her and takes a pull, “you’re done.”

And it’s probably less profound in reality than it feels in the moment, but Clara’s right there with him. She’s nodding like she’s at an intro to sociology class and the professor just said that capitalism is bullshit, actually.

So Richie goes on, tripping along a stone path to his own thoughts. “And it’s like. You know… you know what you want. But you can’t have it. But then maybe…? _ Maybe _. And that maybe fucking tortures you.”

She kisses him.

It takes him a second to notice this new development because all he can taste is nachos. He thinks they’re soggier than he was hoping for, but they’re still real warm, before he clues in that Clara’s lips are currently on his mouth. And still all he’s tasting is nachos, which is so weird because kisses are supposed to taste like mint, right? 

Kisses taste like mint.

Her hand lands on his chest and he rears back.

“Oh, oh no.” Richie shakes his head. Brings the blunt to his lips, but puts it in the ash tray instead. “Not _ me _. Fuck—what? It ain’t me, chief.”

She blinks, shaking her head to clear it. “Right, yeah. Sorry. You’re—you’re with Eddie, right—”

He jerks back. “No!” 

“Huh?”

“No,” he repeats. “Why—no. I’m—I’m not. I’m straight.”

And there’s such a wild variation in pitch that it sounds like question.

Clara cocks her head. “I know I told Jordan you guys weren’t gay, but you two were, like, all over each other. And then he left and you’re—” she waves a hand at him “—in a full-out depressive episode.”

He’s having heart palpitations. He’s gonna have to call Eddie for the symptoms of a heart attack, and if Eddie asks for the cause, he’s gonna have to say his roommate’s girlfriend kissed him and then said he was gay for him.

“It’s okay,” Clara’s saying. “Like, good pick, he’s cute—”

“Of course he’s _ cute _,” Richie spits. He’s up from the couch. “It doesn’t mean I’ve kissed him.”

Laughter bubbles out of her. “Are you sure?”

“Shut the fuck up, Clara.”

Her face shuts down. She’s done. “Don’t fucking swear at me.” She grabs the joint. “I’m going home.”

And leave him all alone with his thoughts? No, please, no.

“Wait, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He’s on his knees next to the nachos. “Stay. You can kiss me more if you want.”

She grimaces, shaking her head. “You’re not a good kisser.”

“Neither are you.”

She looks at him contemplatively and he tries to effuse an air of apology—some stupid acting tactic one of their professors had gone on about this week.

Her face softens. She waves at the TV, trailing a streak of smoke through the air. “Put something good on.”

“Yes. Yes, good.” Richie tilts back to reach the house’s collection of VHS tapes under a side table. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He puts on _ Dirty Dancing _ because it’s Clara’s favourite movie. It’s a weird follow up to the conversation they just had, but he knows she’ll stay through the whole thing.

Richie jabbers through most of it, and Clara argues with almost all his opinions, and tells him to shut up but he doesn’t. It’s normal, it’s basically normal except that Clara’s ‘you’re with Eddie, right?’ slams back into him every few minutes, like a wrecking ball trying to crash through the last of his defences. 

The credits roll and the nachos are done. Clara stands. “I actually am leaving now.”

“Okay,” Richie mumbles.

“Hey don’t—don’t tell Jordan.”

Richie looks up at her. He was just trying to figure out how to say the same thing. It only now occurs to him that Jordan may take offense to the kiss part of things, if he were to ever find out. Not like it matters; Richie would be getting his ass kicked either way.

“Yeah. Same,” Richie says.

She looks down at him with a frown. “Yeah.”

“But hey,” he says as she’s turning to leave. “Seriously. Dump him.”

She smiles. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

And then she’s gone, and Richie takes a nap to stop thinking.

In February, like an angel, Bev comes to New York for fashion week. Richie skips a bunch of classes to make time for her. She tells him how amazing her life is going and Richie is so, so happy for her. 

They travel around New York to places Richie’s never even heard of but Bev’s professors and classmates have raved about. Some of the cafes and museums and stuff are actually cool. Some of it is pretentious bullshit. They have fun either way.

Richie feels more like himself than he has in weeks.

On Friday it’s not nose-bitingly cold during the day, so they climb onto the roof of the shed in Richie’s stamp-sized backyard to share a cigarette.

It reminds him of another time they sat on a roof—of Richie’s garage, the week before the last year of high school started. It had been dark and balmy back then, instead of grey and cool like now, but they’d been passing a cigarette between the two of them back then, too. Richie just thought it looked cool, while Bev claimed to actually like the taste, which was a bunch of bullshit.

Richie had talked a big game about how he was finally gonna get Harriet Huntley to go out with him.

“Harriet Huntley will never even look at you, let alone touch you,” Bev had laughed.

“When I show her what I can do with my hands, she’ll be singing a different tune,” he insisted, doing a creepy version of jazz hands.

“You never stop running your mouth, but have you ever even kissed anybody, Richie?”

“Duh.”

“Who?”

Richie wrapped his arms around his legs, limbs getting ganglier by the day. With how much time has passed, and all the work he spent on repression, it took a moment for his brain to cough up the memory of whose mouth had left an imprint on his. 

His breath caught.

Bev scoffed. “Fucking liar.”

“Shut up, you know Eddie’s mom and I have a very special relationship,” he said, because there was no way he could’ve spilled his secret then.

He kinda wants to tell her now, just to see what she’ll say. She’d have to ask though. He can’t just spit it out.

Bev has her arm around his shoulders, because while it isn’t freezing, it’s still cold. The overcast sky promises snow again later.

“You gonna be okay when I go home?” she asks.

He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Are you under the impression that you’re holding me together?”

She is. 

He’s toying with the idea of spewing the truth in the form of weird jokes and waiting for someone to tug hard enough at the stay conversational thread to pull him loose. Anything’s gotta be healthier that what he’s been doing.

Bev squeezes him to her side. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten our little 2 am phone call. And Stan told me about your guys’ 2 am talk, too.”

“You’re all such terrible gossips,” Richie says, because he wants to know specifically what they said about him but is afraid to ask. “Stan tell you he has a girlfriend?” 

She nods, taking a drag. “He’s happy.”

“He deserves it.”

“So do you.”

He cocks his head. “They say I wasn’t happy?”

Her lips twist knowingly. “You aren’t.”

Can’t argue with that.

“You’re still not dating anyone?” Richie asks, deftly sidestepping the topic.

“Still not feeling it, no. It seems I’ve got trust issues with guys who wanna fuck me.” She rolls her eyes. “Don’t know what that’s about.”

They both laugh a little, and he squeezes her hand. 

She passes him the cigarette, streaming smoke from her lungs into the sky. “And you? Convince anyone to let you kiss them yet?”

His cheeks flare red.

She grins like a shark and turns to face him, still keeping him in the safe circle of her arm. “Tozier, tell me everything.”

He tells her something instead. 

“My roommate’s girlfriend kissed me.” He says because, isolated from the bullshit he’s putting himself through, it’s a scintillating little tale.

She raises her brows. “That sounds messy.”

He shrugs. “What can I say? She couldn’t resist my many, many charms.”

“And is your roommate as charmed?”

He snorts. “He doesn’t know.”

“She hasn’t broken up with him yet?”

Richie pauses. She skipped a step. “How did you know they were fighting?”

“I mean, like, so you two can date?” Bev asks a question of a question, to determine if it’s even the right situation to be asking about.

He’s not sure if it’s funny, but he laughs anyway. “Oh, no. I’m not for her. She was just mad at him and I was nice to her.”

“And you’re not trying to go after her?” she asks curiously. “Is it roommate code of honour, or is she just not that hot?”

“Nah, she’s cool and all, just not my type.” He chooses not to ponder on what his type may actually be, and instead focuses on the Clara of it all. He frowns. “I guess we’re kinda friends.”

It feels weird to say that. He’s only had friends that have been through literal hell with him for so long, he’s forgotten it’s possible to have friends you wouldn’t die for but still wanna hang out with.

“And you guys kissing hasn’t messed that up?” Bev asks.

Richie shakes his head. The only classes he’s been to this week are the ones Clara’s in because she’d still kill him if he didn’t show up.

“Well that’s good,” she says, giving him a bemused look.

“What?”

“Is that all that’s going on?”

“Of course not. I’m a fully-realized three-dimensional person with a thriving social life. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on.”

Bev tugs him in closer, fiery red bangs brushing his forehead. “So do you wanna talk about any of that, Richie?”

Richie ducks his head and stubs the cigarette against the roof. He feels safe, bundled up with Bev. Like when they were kids, teenagers. Sneaking out late to smoke or drink and ending up cuddling for warmth against Derry’s frigid nights. Even when he was at his highest level of dickhead, he knew she always felt safe with him, too.

She goes on, “I know you’re taking Eddie going back to Derry hard—” 

“I kissed somebody else,” he interrupts, because he really, really doesn’t want to think about that. They’d touched on it when she first got to New York, and that was as far as he could go without absolutely destroying his mood.

Is it a sign of growth that he’d rather talk about kissing Eddie than Eddie leaving? Or is it just desperation?

“Oh?” Bev’s face clears of the seriousness she’d slipped into. “Well, tell me about it, stud. Finally living up to your lady-killer claims.”

Richie tries for a smile. It feels rusty.

She doesn’t miss how his shoulders go tense. “Is it worse than kissing your roommate’s girlfriend? Don’t tell me this one’s married.”

He shakes his head.

She doesn’t make any more guesses.

It’s all Richie.

He lights another cigarette. The smoke burns going down his lungs.

He doesn’t know where to look, at Bev, or the sky, or the snow melting on the ground. So he stares at the glowing cigarette tip in his fingers. 

“It’s Eddie.” 

It’s always fucking been Eddie.

“Kaspbrak?” she asks.

He stares at her from beneath his brow. _ Duh _.

“On purpose?” she says.

“How do you kiss someone by accident?”

She swipes his bangs out of his eyes. “You got stuck in a trash can once, Rich. You’re capable of wonders beyond my imagining.”

That makes him smile, even though he feels more like dry heaving. “First time was an accident, maybe. When we were kids.”

“_First _time?”

“Yeah. We used to a lot, but haven’t much since… the summer we met you.”

A prettier way to say the summer they all almost got mauled to death by a demon clown.

She slips the cigarette from his fingers and takes a drag. “Not recently?”

“Once recently,” he says, barely loud enough to be heard.

“When you called me after night riding?” she guesses.

He nods.

“What did Eddie say?”

“Nothing. I pretended I was too drunk to remember.”

She makes a soft clicking noise with her tongue. “Oh, Rich.”

He drops his head on her shoulder, and she rests her head against his. They stay like that for a few minutes, quiet and chilled, but kept warm in each other’s embrace. Richie feels brittle and drained, like one stray gust of wind could shatter him.

“So… what does that mean?” Bev lifts her head. “For you?”

He holds his breath. “What do you think it means?”

Just say it. Say it for him. Shoot him like Mike puts down cows and put him out of his misery.

She regards him so carefully. He knows he looks pathetic. 

He’s barely been sleeping, nightmares turning into day-mares thinking about Eddie returning to that town to suffocate in his mother’s clutches. Richie wishes so bad that destroying another clown could save him, but it’s just _ life _ taking Eddie away, and there’s nothing Richie can do about that.

Bev doesn’t put him out of his misery. She cups the back of his neck with an icy hand and kisses his forehead. “It means we love you, Richie. So, so much.”

It’s the kindest she could be while sinking her fingers into the very core of him. He ducks his head and watches two crystalline tears splash onto the sleeve of his coat. 

He abruptly decides his chest hurts too much to think about this any further.

Richie wipes his eyes and clears his throat. “Yeah, whatever. I always knew you had a secret crush on me.” He turns his face to the sky and says, “January embers, my crotch burns there, too!”

“Fuck off, Tozier,” she laughs and tries to push him off the roof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Lemme know your thoughts!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks, I'm tired. Almost every scene in this chapter was written by me just going 'hey, what if this happened?' but I think it works  
TW marijuana use, homophobia

Richie calls him the night after Bev leaves.

He doesn’t answer.

Five minutes later, Richie’s phone rings. It’s as scary as anything else in his life.

He gropes for it across the barren mattress. He’d washed his sheets because Bev had told him to, but that was two days ago and he still hasn’t put them back on.

He answers the phone half a ring before it’ll disconnect.

Rather than speaking, he takes a long drag of his second joint of the night. He holds the smoke in his mouth, waiting to exhale until someone speaks. He hasn’t talked to Eddie in two weeks.

His lungs burn by the time he hears a small, “Rich?”

Smoke leaves him in a gasped cough. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Richie doesn’t have anything to  _ say _ per se. Any words that come even close to the truth churn his stomach. 

He’d just missed him.

Luckily, Eddie takes hold of the conversation. “You told everyone?”

Richie sinks into the bed slow, like quicksand is drawing him in. He imagines it envelopes his feet, then his waist, and chest, and it’s almost at his mouth before he finds the strength to say, “No. Just Bev.”

“Stan said you told him.”

Richie tilts his head back to keep talking past the sand. “I didn’t.”

“Why are you lying?”

He frowns. “What did I tell Stan?”

“That I’m going back.”

Richie closes his eyes. The sand dissolves, but the pressure on his chest remains.

He thought he’d meant the kissing. No reason to assume so, other than it being the only thing on his mind since he lit up an hour ago.

“Oh,” Richie says dumbly. “Yeah, I just told Stan.”

“Are you drunk?” Eddie asks.

“Who’s to say?”

“Are you high?”

“For sure.”

Eddie sighs. 

Tears prick Richie’s eyes like stars in the night. He’s way too high to deal with Eddie’s disappointment right now.

“ _ I _ was gonna tell them,” Eddie says, more resigned than mad.

Richie doesn’t say anything.

“Mike’s not even excited,” Eddie continues quietly. 

Richie wraps his lips tight around the roach and sucks, right next to the receiver. With his exhale he says, “Why should he be?”

“So I have one small upside in all this?”

“Sorry, Eds.”

_ You don’t have to go. _ It’s a persistent pounding against his skull, but Eddie doesn’t wanna hear it, so Richie holds it in. 

But then they’re the only words bundled on his tongue, and he can’t think of anything else to say. So silence stretches. It’s why he hasn’t bothered calling; Richie doesn’t know how to be normal with this horrible future hanging over Eddie.

He barely knows how to be normal with those other thoughts demanding his attention—of kissing Eddie, wrapping him in his arms to keep him safe. Brushing his hair back, promising to protect him. It puts an ache in his chest that he can barely breathe past.

He can’t express that now though, not over the phone, when he can’t form the words. He wonders what  would shake loose if Eddie was in front of him again.

Richie swallows. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have called.”

“Maybe I wanted you to call.”

Richie’s breath hitches and takes his vocal chords hostage. He lets out a strangled, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The word is so soft that Richie has the urge to cup it in his palms like a newborn bird. “I—come on, you can’t leave me alone like this.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, digging his forehead into his knee. That’s  _ Richie’s _ line; Eddie’s the one who’s leaving. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Eddie.”

“You’re—you know what I mean. This is hard, Rich.” 

He sounds tired. Not because it’s almost midnight—the other kind of tired. But he spouts his thoughts as easy as always, except instead of calming Richie like the dulcet sounds of a babbling brook, they batter him like they’re a waterfall he’s trapped under. 

“There’s some trouble with getting her doctor’s notes, incorrect dates or something, or Derry doctors being shit, I dunno, but if that falls through I won’t able to defer after all. So I’ll have to apply all over again whenever she decides to let me go forever. And then I started wondering if she’ll just die over the summer, so I’ll be able to sort everything out before September, but that’s fucking awful.”

“It’s not awful,” Richie mutters. 

Richie hopes she dies. She’s never done a damn good thing for Eddie, why should he help her now? Where does she get off ruining his life just when he’s got it started without her? It’s not fucking fair.

Eddie’s still going.

Richie flops onto his back, joint bit between his teeth as he rubs his eyes. He can’t do this, he can’t fucking do this. It feels like his chest is splitting in  _ two _ .

He plucks the joint out of his mouth with a grimace. He flicks the butt into a mug that had been half-filled with coffee before Eddie’s end of the world declaration, and now is completely filled with soggy cigarette butts growing their own ecosystem.

Eddie continues sounding absolutely miserable, and  _ god _ , Richie wants to kiss him to shut him up.

He muffles his mouth against his hand.

Eddie’s saying, “… know how long it took to convince her to even let me finish the semester?”

“You shouldn’t have to convince her,” Richie manages to say. “She’s a state away and you’re an adult in college. It’s your decision—”

“And when I say no and she drives here anyway?”

The image of Sonia Kasprak showing up in Eddie’s dorm room to scream at him to pack his bags sends ice down Richie’s spine. But he’s ill-equipped to express the horrific sympathy welling within him. 

Eddie’s letting himself be reeled like a fish back to Derry, knowing exactly what he’s in for and going anyway—that must be terrifying. Richie doesn’t  _ want _ to leave him; he wants to remove the rusty hook from his lip and save him, but he doesn’t know how.

“So you’re giving up instead?” Richie says it to both of them.

“I’m taking care of my mom—”

He fists his hand in his hair hard enough to sting. “If you wanna take care of her, stick her in an asylum, she’s a violent fucking narcissist—”

“And I don’t wanna be like her,” Eddie says heatedly. Richie’s jaw slams shut. “So I’m not putting myself first, okay? I’m not putting  _ you _ first. I’m gonna check on my mother because I’m a grown man and that’s what I decided. Can you please—” He loses steam in the blink of an eye. “Please just… please.”

Please what? Please shut up? Please support him? Give him a reason not to go? Does he want Richie to confess every thought he’s kept secret since they were twelve? 

Whatever he wants, Richie’s sure he can’t do it.

He wipes tears from his cheeks and says thickly, “I told you I shouldn’t have called.”

A shuddering breath rattles through the receiver. “Stop saying that.”

So he thinks about everything he’s stopped himself from saying— _ I miss you, I love you, I want you here with me, don’t leave, come back, please Eddie, please _ —

All that slips out is a murmuring, “Eddie.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

Another moment stretches between them before Eddie says, “I need to—I’ve got homework to do.”

“Oh.”  He really shouldn’t have called this fucking high. 

Eddie doesn’t hang up, though.  And it’s not like Richie has the strength to end the call, so he just closes his eyes and listens to Eddie’s breathing pick up.

Richie thinks but doesn’t say,  _ I can do this all night, man. _

He can stay. Eddie doesn’t wanna be alone, Richie can stay.

“I’m gonna hang up.” Eddie’s voice shakes.

Or not.

The line cuts off in the middle of a wheeze.

Richie flips over and buries his face in a pillow to cover the sound of his hoarse screaming.

He can’t shake the feeling that his chest is cracked open. Not beyond repair like when he shattered his grandpa’s urn, just broken like a chocolate egg. A Cadbury creme egg, with ooey gooey emotions leaking out of him in all the wrong places. And if he tries to scoop them back in place, they just get all over his hands and arms and face until there’s no denying they're all over him.

He resolves not to smoke alone again.

Then he rings up Bev.

“Yeah?”

“Can you call Eddie?”

“Richie?” she says. He grunts. “What am I calling him for?”

Because Richie is going out of his fucking mind, and he’s a selfish prick, and he can’t function while listening to Eddie talk about how miserable he is when he doesn’t fucking have to be. 

Because he could just stay with Richie. He could stay with Richie!

“Please?” It’s a squeak.

Bev sighs. “Okay, Richie, I’ll call him. You get some sleep though, alright? On nice clean bedsheets.”

They hang up and Richie, with great effort, rolls off his mattress and makes his bed, before slipping under the covers and disappearing from the world.

What he’d love, but is not going to get, is to go to a museum exhibit of himself, so all the parts of him that are different from other people would be pointed out to him and thoroughly explained to the point of tedium. He wants to be told what to do and how he’s feeling by someone better at being himself than him. 

It’s cowardly scrambling for security when he knows what he  _ wants _ to do, but he can’t force himself to do anything different.

What would the point even be, with Eddie going back to Derry?

And that’s the wall he keeps coming up against.  Because it could be okay, otherwise.

After the panic attack in Eddie’s dorm, he sought comfort in Richie’s arms. At the rave, Richie’s sure that his mouth tasted like sour smoke, but Eddie matched Richie’s frenzied fervour all the same. Eddie stayed in Richie’s gross student house rather than missing a visit. He told Richie he was leaving first. He wanted him to call.

That had to mean something. 

But maybe it didn’t.

And maybe Eddie moving back to Derry ruined everything anyway.

And it’s like Richie told Clara. 

It’s the  _ maybe _ that tortures you.

In the following days, Richie calls Bill to chat, and when they’re done Richie asks him to call Eddie, please, because Bill hasn’t talked to him in a while, right? And the next day Richie talks to Ben and asks when the last time he called Eddie was and oh, had it really been that long? Better give him a ring. 

And he goes on like that in a valiant, possibly futile, attempt to not leave Eddie alone.

His sister Peggy was on her fifth official boyfriend (third that their parents knew about), and the first one she’d brought home since she’d moved out. She said it was getting Serious, which was probably a ploy into convincing their parents to let them sleep in the same room. Shockingly, it didn’t work.

But it did put a spotlight on Richie.

His grandmother was visiting, and she was getting tunnel vision for great-grandchildren, because apparently Richie and Peggy just weren’t enough for her. Out of the blue she said, “Richie, when are you going to bring a nice girl home?”

He froze halfway through his second bite of her homemade cookies.

He was starting junior year in a month and somehow he’d never been asked this question. Stan’s parents were constantly on him to find a good Jewish girl, and Ben’s mom was always pointing out girls at his church, and even Mike’s grandpa wanted him to find someone to settle down with. But Richie’s parents… well, you had to pay attention to your children to notice they were missing something, right?

“He’s never brought a girl home,” Peggy said snidely. “And if he did, she wouldn’t be nice.”

What was Richie supposed to say—it wasn’t for lack of trying, the girls at his school (as well as everybody else but the losers) just loathed him?

That response wouldn’t stick it to his sister.

Richie crossed his legs, folding his hands over his knobbly knee. “I’m saving myself for marriage, Grandma. Pastor Pete said that premarital sex is a sin that gets you sent straight to the fiery pits of hell.” He gloated as he watched his sister’s boyfriend slide his hand off her leg. She glared at him with the intensity of a demon already in hell. He shrugged, smiling. “Can’t argue with the bible.”

His grandmother nodded, a confused little smile on her wrinkled mouth.

His mother blinked slowly as she processed his statement.

Before anyone could decide on a response, a violent smacking sounded from the kitchen. 

Richie twisted, just able to see Eddie through the screen door out back, knocking furiously. Eddie’s mom had been up his ass since school ended, so Richie had barely seen him in three weeks. A fucking travesty.

Richie jumped out of his seat. “You can hang out?”

Eddie nodded furiously. “The movie starts in twenty minutes! Let’s go!”

Richie was halfway through grabbing his sandals when his dad said, “Uh, son?”

“Huh?”

“Your grandmother is visiting.”

Which was a a pointless announcement. She’d been there an hour and a half already.

“Bye, Grandma,” Richie said. “Cookies were a delight as always.”

“I meant,” his father continued pointedly as Richie skipped through the house to the kitchen. “We’re visiting as a  _ family _ . How about you see a movie later—”

“You gonna convince Mrs. Kaspbrak to reschedule her good will?” Richie retorted.

His mom sighed. “Let him go.”

Richie was already noogie-ing Eddie on his way out the door. Eddie put up a perfunctory fight to free himself, but it involved ramming his shoulder into Richie's chest, so it turned into more of a walking hug than anything.

So Richie squeezed him tighter as they made it to the sidewalk.

“Get off me.” Eddie squirmed. He was too pale for the middle of the summer. Felt shorter, too. Fuck, was Richie still growing?

Richie hooked his arm around his neck. “Only if you say you missed me.”

“Of course I missed you, dipshit, now get off me!”

Richie released him with a wide grin. Eddie scowled up at him, already annoyed a minute into being reunited. His grin grew. Richie missed this.

He pinched Eddie’s cheek. “What’re we seeing, Spaghetti?”

His irritation cracked with a smile. “I talked my mom into letting me see  _ Beauty and the Beast _ because the second _ Bill & Ted  _ movie is playing in the same theatre.”

“Delicious. Let’s go.”

After the movie, walking back into the hot afternoon sun, Eddie squinted at him. “Had you already seen that?”

“Yeah, I went with Bill and Ben and Bev last week.”

“Bill and Ben and Bev?” he repeated incredulously.

He barked a laugh, because Eddie put it all together way quicker than he had. “Yeah, Bev was looking for someone to go with, and Ben volunteered, but I knew it wasn’t his kind of thing, so I told him I’d go instead, and then Bill said he wanted to go even though his dad took him already so—” He rolled his eyes. “I was halfway through the fucking movie before it occurred to me that they weren’t there to find out what wacky hijinks Bill and Ted got up to this time.”

Eddie laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

He shrugged widely. “Never said I was anything else.”

They headed up the street, taking their time before Eddie would have to go home. “So you liked it, then?”

“Yeah, it’s solid,” Richie nodded. “Not as good as the first one, though. You like it?”

“Yeah, it was funny.” He cut him a glance. “But I’m not the one who saw it twice in the past week. We could’ve seen something else.”

“Nah, you scammed your mom just to see it.” He waved him off, not wanting either of them to delve too far into his reasoning and how it kind of maybe lined up with Bill’s. “Hey, I told my sister she was going to hell for fucking her boyfriend, so pray for me tonight, alright?”

“What?” Eddie laughed, grabbing his arm as he listened, enthralled in Richie’s retelling as they walked.

They hung out a while longer, paid a kid who’d seen _ Beauty and the Beast _ to tell them what happened in it in case Eddie’s mom asked, and then Eddie said he really needed to be getting home.

“Hey,” Richie said when they reached the street corner where they’d part ways. 

“What?”

It was on the tip of his tongue, to say that he’d missed Eddie too, or that Eddie better keep finding ways to escape his house, because the clubhouse wasn’t the same without him. But that all felt weird. It was just Eddie.

So what Richie said was, “Say hi to your mom for me.”

He shoved his shoulder, rolling his eyes. “Say hi to your sister for me, Trashmouth."

Richie’s not sure he likes his improv class. It was one of the courses he'd been most looking forward to, but the class is 80/20 guys to girls, and most of the guys’ jokes are just dunking on how annoying girls are about dating, or makeup, or literally anything else girls do. And the teacher’s only directions ever are to ‘Yes And’ so everybody has to go along with it. 

Aren’t they supposed to be over pulling on girls’ pigtails for attention by now?

“It’s because they’re misogynists,” Clara complains as she determinedly keeps pace with Richie’s long strides.

Performing off-campus is required for their improv class, and their teacher had arranged for them all to perform at a comedy club they're on their way to.

“Misogy-what?” Richie says.

“They hate women.”

“Oh.” He thinks about it. “I guess they sure act like it, huh?”

She shoots him an unimpressed look. “Don’t act like you’re not part of it. Can you even get a laugh without making a pussy joke?”

“Uh. Yes?”

He opens the door to the club, and they’re already late because Clara had bought them both soft pretzels to get Richie to lighten up a little. She hadn’t asked any follow up questions on his abysmal mood, only told him to brighten up for their comedy performance (“ _ Comedy _ , Richie, not tragedy. Get that look off your face.”). The soft pretzel drizzled with chocolate and caramel is definitely helping.

They barely have time to get their coats off before they’re thrust onto stage with two other classmates.

Even though the nature of improv is that you have nothing prepared, somehow being in front of a real audience waiting to laugh and not being allowed to joke about vaginas has Richie so frantic that he stutters through half his lines. He’s never felt closer to Bill in his life.

The guys they performed with razz him about being dead in the water once they get off stage, but they still invite him to grab a beer and hang out.

Clara pats him on the shoulder. “I appreciate the effort. Work on your material.”

And then she leaves, because she’s clearly skeeved by the overall vibe of this basement comedy club.

The last of their classmates perform, and then it’s announced some semi-professional stand up comics will hit the stage in half an hour. Richie and a few classmates stick around because it’s easier to stay than brave the cold outside, and Richie doesn’t have anything better to do other than wallow alone in his room.

They’re ten minute sets, and the first comic isn’t bad, but the second guy opens with, “I hate my wife. That isn’t a joke, I just wish I’d read the fine print on the marriage license, you know? Til death do us part? When am I gonna die already?”

And Richie isn’t interested in listening to ten minutes of hackneyed, misogynist bullshit (he wonders if Clara would be proud of him).

He cups his hand and yells, “Divorce her, dipshit!”

One of the guys from his improv class slaps his arm to shut him up. 

“You’re  _ supposed _ to heckle these guys,” Richie whispers at him.

From the stage, the comic yells back, “You think I got money for a divorce, kid?”

“Til death do you part isn’t the fine print, it’s the thesis statement!” Richie replies. “You can’t fucking read?”

The crowd laughs. Richie revels in it. His classmates groan.

The comic squints past the stage lights and points a stubby finger at Richie. “Weren’t you the twink who couldn’t get a sentence out straight doing improv?”

Richie’s face catches fire. His mouth shoots off while his brain’s still wailing with emergency sirens. “You think I’m pretty enough to be a twink? Maybe there’s a reason you hate your wife.”

And then. 

Then the guy goes off on this homophobic diatribe that makes Jordan look like an amateur. Richie hasn’t heard this many slurs in the span of a minute since he left Derry. The comic’s face is red. Spittle is flying from his mouth.

Richie looks at his classmates in shock. He looks at the rest of the audience, who keep switching their attention between him and the comic. Richie stares at the bar staff, whose eyes are bulging but whose feet aren’t moving to put any sort of stop to this.

Shock encompasses all other feelings. This guy can’t hit him, right? He’s all the way up on the stage. And there are so many people here. Listening to this.

Finally the comic takes a raging breath. He’s glaring at Richie, daring him to retaliate. “Got anything to say, cocksucker?”

“Yeah.” Richie stands. Smooths the wrinkles on his Hawaiian shirt. “I fucked your wife.”

And he walks out. 

Once he’s on the sidewalk, he pulls a smoke out of his jacket with shaking hands. It takes him three tries to light it. He leans against the brick wall for support.

He should go, he should run, he should get the fuck out of dodge before anyone comes out after him, but he doesn’t have the strength to move.

The comic’s speech rattles around his brain like those alphabet fridge magnets you can leave messages with. He can’t move his head without seeing another hate-filled word burst into focus.

Fuck. He blinks hard. He pushes his glasses up and scrubs a hand over his eyes.

The club door creaks open and his heart jumps to his throat. 

He pushes off the wall, casting half a glance over his shoulder. It’s someone he knows but doesn’t expect. Bryant, the gay guy from school.

Somehow Richie feels even shittier.

He doesn’t intend to pause his retreat but he does, and Bryant makes eye contact with him as he heads his way instead of ignoring him like usual.

Richie chokes on smoke once Bryant stop in front of him. “You need a light?” he coughs.

“Do you have a spare cigarette?” he asks. His neat blonde hair looks white under the street lamp.

Richie passes him a cigarette and lights it. Bryant holds it primly between two fingers, his free hand crossed over his chest as he takes a drag.

“Hey, uh, sorry about—in there,” Richie offers awkwardly. “That was—you didn’t need to hear that.”

Bryant cocks his head to look at him, and the longer he does, the hotter Richie’s cheeks get. Was he out of line somehow bringing it up? Does Bryant want to know if the accusations were true?

“ _ No one _ needed to hear that,” Bryant says after a moment. “But it’s not yours to apologize for, is it?”

“I—uh, I guess not.”

He blows smoke into the night air. “That neanderthal is a remnant of a bygone era, and he and his ilk will die off sooner rather than later.”

Richie blinks. “Is that—that’s not Shakespeare, is it?”

Bryant laughs, and it’s the first non-stage smile Richie’s seen from him. “No, Tozier—I just take the opportunity to use the full breadth of the English language.”

“Cool.” He nods. “I know like ten words tops, so pardon me if I can’t keep up.”

“You know what I said.”

Richie takes another drag. He’s stopped shaking.

Bryant’s clothes are so clean. And ironed. Who irons?

“Are you heading back to campus?” Bryant asks.

“In that direction.”

“Would you like to catch the subway together?”

“Don’t you mean would I enjoy a subterranean trip in a new-fangled electronic carriage?”

“See, I knew you were a liar. That’s already more than ten words.” He starts walking. “Come on.”

Richie doesn’t like the subway, he usually takes the bus, but he’s usually alone, too. So he follows him.

“Yeah,” Richie says, “before that guys comes out and we get hatecrimed.”

He looks at him sideways. “You have to be in a minority that the perpetrator hates for it to count as a hatecrime.”

Richie blinks at him with big eyes. “In my experience, it's never mattered to the perp, officer.”

“You think you’re so funny, but your improv was atrocious.”

They cross the street as the light switches to a hand flashing for them not walk. 

“Think that’s why he went off?” Richie hops onto the curb. “So pissed at me making a mockery of the comedic arts—”

“He went off because he’s a homophobe and you called him gay,” Bryant interrupts flatly.

Richie looks away. “Yeah, they’re not big fans of that. Got a broken nose for doing it once.”

“And yet you persist.”

“What, like I’m gonna learn from my mistakes?”

Bryant bites his lip wryly. “I’m sure someone who cares about your wellbeing has been begging you to do so from a very young age.”

Richie trips on a cracked piece of sidewalk. “Are you psychic?”

He sends him another peculiar look as they descend the subway stairs. “It was a lucky guess. I don’t believe you’re an idiot—you’re too good of an actor for that—but you do seem to love playing the fool.”

This dude is burning Richie to dust. He’s morbidly impressed.

They make it onto a mostly empty subway car and sit down. It jumbles and jerks as it speeds them deep underground. Richie pointedly does not look out the window, uninterested in what he might find in the dark, or his own face reflected back at him.

“So, where are you from?” Richie asks to fill the silence. He turns sideways on the seat to face Bryant fully. “Originally?”

“Texas.”

“Jesus, how are you alive?”

“Pardon?”

“Wait—no accent?”

“I’m an actor.” Bryant pronounces it  _ ac-tor _ instead of  _ acter, _ just like a pompous  _ ac-tor _ would do. “And why wouldn’t I be alive?”

Richie scratches the back of his head, debating how to explain, and then just goes for it. “Don’t—don’t take this the wrong way. But the whole time I was growing up, there were rumours about me, right? And I denied them—”

“Drowning in pussy,” Bryant quips.

He coughs to hide his cringe. “You got it. And, uh, I still got beaten up and had slurs written on my locker. So I’m impressed that… you survived. In  _ Texas _ .”

“Where are you from?”

“Maine. Small town.” He skips describing the demonic clown infestation; it’s not important.

Bryant crosses his leg at the knee, his posture impeccable. Curiosity evident, he asks, “Are you under the impression that every gay person is bullied to death in their hometown as a child?”

“If they’re not in the closet?” Richie raises his brows. “Kinda, yeah.”

Bryant nods. He doesn’t seem mad, which feels like a miracle. His eyes trail over Richie—his greasy hair, coke bottle glasses, wrinkled shirt and stained jeans. “Can I ask you a question?”

He cracks a joke to save himself. “I know what you’re gonna ask—no, I don’t shop retail. If you can believe it, this entire outfit is thrifted.”

“Are you gay, Tozier?”

Richie’s fully expecting it, but it still blows him back in his seat. 

He can’t remember being asked that question so directly before. It’s always been shouted at him in accusation, or assumed in horror and quickly hammered out of him. Or skirted around so carefully without naming it, as if giving the concept words would give it unknowable power. (That last one was mostly his own doing.)

But he’s still here. Alive. No bully or clown has throttled him yet.

And he’s—he’s weirdly calm. Bryant is gay. And a stranger, so who cares what he thinks? It makes him impartial—he doesn’t even  _ like _ Richie. So he’ll tell it like it is, right? No instinct to save Richie’s feelings. 

“You tell me.” Richie says it like a question. Like a plea. 

If he could just know… He chews on his thumbnail. He still doesn’t know what he’d do.

Bryant rolls his eyes. Dryly, he says, “Do you like men?”

“I can’t answer that.” He really, really can’t.

“Why, because it would be too easy?” 

He pouts. “Well I sure don’t like  _ you _ .”

He laughs again. “I don’t know…” He pauses contemplatively. “Have you had sex with a woman?”

Richie waves the question away like a pesky fly. “This—can I ask you a question instead?”

He checks his watch. “We’ve got ten minutes left of this subterranean electronic carriage ride, so go ahead.”

Maybe he does like Bryant.

He pulls his right leg to his chest, setting his chin on his knee to get comfortable. “So, Bryant—”

“It’s actually Bryan.”

Richie’s face drains of colour.

He breaks out in wicked grin. “No, no, I’m joking. Go ahead.”

No, he definitely hates this guy.

Richie glares at him, then takes a deep breath. Dives in. “Did you ever, like, kiss your childhood best friend more than once, on multiple occasions, for different reasons, when you were a kid? And then were disappointed when you had to stop?”

He squints at him. “This friend is a boy?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

He nods, taking it in. “Do you still talk to him?”

Which isn’t an answer, but Richie hadn’t really asked a question.

“Every day,” Richie says.

Bryant breathes a laugh, rubbing his forehead. “Did you ever discuss it with him?”

“Not really. Not about why. Or stopping it.”

“Why did you stop?”

Richie shifts, pulling his leg closer. “Unrelated shared trauma. I guess.”

“Jesus, I’m not a therapist.”

“You asked,” he retorts. “And I refuse to elaborate, so don’t worry.”

“Fantastic. Is it that little loudmouth you brought to weekend rehearsal?”

His cheeks catch fire.

He smiles knowingly. “Do you love him?”

The question, unexpected and life-shaking, sets sparks racing across Richie’s skin.

He swallows. “He’s my best friend.”

The assertion sits heavy on his tongue. It's not a lie, but somehow it doesn't feel like the truth.

Bryant hums. “Let me think.”

Richie nods. He allows Bryant to deliberate as the subway rolls along, bouncing him up and down while he waits for an answer he’s not gonna know what to do with.

When they’re a stop away from campus, Bryant shrugs. “Sounds hetero to me!”

And he stands to wait by the exit doors.

“What?” Richie wobbles after him, legs uneasy on the moving subway. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You don’t get to take a  _ Cosmo _ -esque quiz with a gay guy and get granted a new sexuality,” Bryant says like Richie’s an idiot. “ _ You _ decide.”

“But…” His whine peters off, and the subway rattles to a stop.

His feet drag as he follows Bryant onto the platform. There aren’t a lot of people around, but Bryant still waits until they’re outside and the sidewalk is completely clear to speak again.

“Were you hoping to be pronounced gay?” Bryant asks finally. “Because that can be an answer if you want it to be.”

The moon’s bright and it’s chillier than Richie remembers. He’s never felt more lost in his life.

He swallows past a lump in his throat. “Of course I don’t  _ want _ —why would I want that?”

Richie ducks his head when Bryant’s lips twist dryly. “Because you miss kissing your little friend?” 

Hearing someone else say it hits like a kick to the head. Shame colours Richie's cheeks talking about it so openly now that they aren’t in the enclosed, liminal space of the subway. He’s too exposed, out of in the middle of everything talking about kissing Eddie. It's private. It's his. 

Bryant’s voice softens. “Hey, do what feels right, okay? If you feel safer like this, then stay like this.”

But Richie doesn’t feel safe. He feels pathetic. He’s drowning in more self-loathing than he’d ever drowned in pussy, and he doesn’t know whether he hates himself more for being like  _ this _ or yearning for it.

“Okay,” Bryant says, quietly, but less gentle than a moment before. “Like I said, I’m not a therapist, so I’ll be leaving now. You’ll make it home tonight, right?”

Richie nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“Great.” He adjusts his scarf. “Full disclosure, I will be detailing this encounter to my boyfriend, but other than him, I’ll keep it to myself.”

He turns to leave, which is when Richie manages to say, “You have a boyfriend? Wow.”

He looks at him over his shoulder. “Being gay isn’t all angry stand up comics and broken noses, Tozier. I promise.”

Last year, he’d called Bev because he didn’t know who else to talk to about this random gay guy in his program. Like, if the kids in Derry hated Richie because he was effeminate enough to nudge their non-existent gaydars, they would’ve shit their pants seeing Bryant. He encompassed all the hate-filled words they flung at Richie daily. 

And Bryant didn’t give a flaming shit about what anybody thought. He was out here living his best life as if he’d never heard of a hate crime.

“I just don’t get it,” Richie said.

“Don’t get what?” He’d interrupted Bev in the middle of painting, because she painted for fun now like any good liberal arts student. She was multi-tasking talking to him now.

“This guy, he just…” Richie twirled the payphone cord around his finger attempting to form a coherent thought. “Like, what gives him the right?”

“The right to what?”

“To—to live like that.”

“To  _ live _ ?” Bev replied incredulously. She adjusted the phone on her shoulder, actually paying attention now apparently. “Are you asking what’s giving this gay guy the right to live?”

“No! Live like  _ that _ . I said like that! Listen.” He tilted his head back, and was met with the sight of graffiti even on the ceiling of this phone booth. “I got dragged through the fucking mud my whole life and I’m not even—like that, y’know, and he flounces around like Puck from  _ A Midsummer Night’s Dream _ —”

“Well I’m glad you’re connecting with your reading material,” Bev said flatly. “Even if you are using it to call a gay guy a fairy.”

“It’s not fair,” Richie spat. Every time she said ‘gay’ it struck like an electric shock.

There was a pause, a clinking of glass. Cleaning her paint brush, maybe. Quietly, Bev asked, “And what would be fair, Richie? If he was getting beat up every time he stepped out of the house?”

His stomach dropped. “No.”

“Because you could beat him up, right?” she continued. “I’m sure even in New York there are people who don’t think it’s  _ fair _ that he gets to live his life. Do you wanna be like them? Like Bowers and the other fuckers in Derry who had a coronary every time they thought they saw a gay person?”

“No.” His voice was small.

“You can't know he hasn’t gotten dragged through the mud. Have you ever talked to him?”

“He doesn’t like me,” Richie mumbled.

He’d stared at Bryant the first day of classes like he was a praying mantis at a zoo’s insect exhibit. Richie just couldn’t fucking believe such a presence was permitted to exist. How had he avoided society’s wrath? How wasn’t he stoned on sight? Richie’s silent enrapturement hadn’t been well-received.

Bev snorted. “Maybe he can smell your homophobia.”

“I’m not,” Richie said weakly. 

He wasn’t like everybody in  Derry, and the guys from high school who got violent when anyone implied they might like dick. He wasn’t  _ angry  _ when that happened to him. He was fucking terrified. And he wasn’t mad at Bryant. 

He was jealous.

Walking the rest of the way home, Richie’s braced against the cold, but he’s burning with embarrassment thinking back on that conversation with Bev. Because he’d thought he was jealous of Bryant for existing without getting shit on, but now he’s thinking he was just jealous that Bryant was out of the closet. That he knew who he was and was proud to share it.

What must it be like, to embrace who you are instead of flinching away from any hint of the real you?

Richie’s suddenly desperate to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all your feedback so far!! I'm glad people like Clara lol  
We're reaching the home stretch here, so please let me know how you're liking it!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everybody for your feedback on the last chapter! I feel like I'm pushing it involving all these oc's but people seem to like them, so I'm very happy!  
This chapter is back to the losers, though :)  
Also the chapter count is 14 now because there's gonna be a lil epilogue after the last real chapter.  
TW mild homophobia

When Richie was young, young enough that he still thought the names of his parents were literally mom and dad, he found his parents’ wedding album in the living room.

“What’s a wedding?” he asked his dad, who was sitting on the floor across from him trying to set the time on the VCR. 

“A party where you get married,” he said without looking up.

“You and mom are married, right?”

“That’s right, son.”

Richie flipped another page in the album. His chubby, sticky fingers were not careful with the stiff, shiny pages. He stopped on a picture of the full bridal party, big hair for everyone, and poofy pink dresses for the bridesmaids. They all looked very excited to be there. He liked parties. 

“I wanna get married.”

“You will, one day.”

“To who?

His dad let out a little grunt. Even when Richie was too young to be purposefully annoying, he still got his dad there in record time. “Anyone you want.”

So many possibilities, but Richie knew just who he wanted to have a party with. “I’m gonna marry Bill.”

His dad finally looked up from the VCR. He was honest to god working up a sweat over setting the clock. His face was red a second ago, but it had drained of colour. “You can’t marry Bill.”

“Why not?”

“He’s a boy.”

That didn’t make sense. “Can I marry Eddie?”

“No.” He set the VCR down and came over to where Richie was sitting. This intense attention startled Richie as his dad put his hands on his little shoulders. “Richie, you can’t marry a boy, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“But why not? They’re my best friends.”

He smiled tightly. “It’s not right. It’s just not right, Richie.”

“But _ why _?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

He looked at the photo of his dad cutting the cake. “Then I’ll marry Bill now before I understand.”

“You’re not marrying Bill!” He jumped to a shout in a second.

Tears immediately welled in Richie’s eyes.

His dad let him go. “Stop it, Richie.” He only cried harder. “You can marry—what about Lucy, from across the street? You like her.”

Richie paused in his crying. 

Lucy would demand a bubblegum-flavoured cake, which was okay but not ideal, and she’d also want the whole wedding to be Barbie-themed. He started crying again. “You said I couldn’t play with her.”

“No I didn’t.”

“All she has is Barbies, and you wouldn’t let me play with the B-b-barbies,” he sobbed. He imagined being stuck in the corner of his own party, forbidden to touch any of the taffeta and silk decorations.

“God, Richie.” He did this full-body irritation move that Richie became well-acquainted with as he grew up. His dad dropped his head back, rolling his eyes with a shrug that drew him farther away from Richie. It meant he was done with the conversation.

Five minutes later, his mom walked past the living room. “Why is Richie crying?”

“I don’t know, he’s always crying.” His dad swore. “Maggie, I can’t figure out this damn VCR with his carrying on.”

Richie’s mom wiped Richie’s face down with the corner of her shirt. “Sweetie, why don’t you go to Bill’s while I help your dad?”

Like turning off a faucet, the tears stopped. He wasn’t gonna ask his dad if he could still be _ friends _ with Bill—that was happening whether it was right or not.

He was out the door before his dad had a chance to say any different.

Richie gets to visit Bill on spring break, because Bill’s staying at his parent’s place, which is a much more manageable distance than Bill’s college is from New York.

The house is unfamiliar to Richie, slick and modern, just like every house lined up on the street next to it. It looks nothing like the home the Denbroughs had in Derry. 

It’s weird that he doesn’t recognize his best friend’s house. Bill’s room seems foreign to even Bill himself—he’d only lived there six months before leaving for college.

So Bill borrows his dad’s car and they catch up while driving past shiny new neighbourhoods and unfamiliar landscapes, until they get hungry and find a good fast food place. They grab burgers from the drive thru and then Bill takes them up an escarpment where he parks. 

The whole city is spread out before them as the sun begins to set.

“So romantic,” Richie says as they eat on the hood of the car. 

“I try,” Bill grins. 

“You ever bring any girls up here?”

“No. Just came here to think.” He sucks pop up his straw. “It was weird, finishing high school without you g-g-guys. I never got comfortable.”

Had he been comfortable in Derry? Had any of them? Richie’s pretty sure he was halfway through his first semester before he stopped instinctively looking over his shoulder every time he left the house.

“You talked to Eddie lately?” Bill asks.

“You have, right?” Richie says, not answering the question.

“Uh huh.”

“How’s he doing?”

Bill squints into the bleeding red sunset falling over his parent’s town. “He asked the same thing about you.”

Richie tears into his burger so he doesn’t have to reply.

“Like, do you think throwing the rest of the losers at him will make him forget about you?”

He swallows hard on a sesame seed bun.

Bill goes back to eating for a minute, but soon enough presses forward. “I just don’t get why you won’t t-t-talk to him. Are you mad at him?”

Richie shakes his head.

“So why are you ignoring him while he’s still, like, available?”

It does not feel like Richie’s been ignoring Eddie. Yes, he hasn’t been calling him, but every stray thread of thought is dedicated to him. To Richie, it’s like he’s been drowning in Eddie. 

He doesn’t know how to explain that to Bill.

“I’ve been dealing with stuff,” Richie says dully.

Bill’s brows pull together. “What stuff?” 

The truth and french fries get stuck in Richie’s throat. He chugs his root beer.

“Come on,” Bill says gently after a moment. “Don’t make me guess.”

He wipes his mouth on a greasy napkin. Testing the waters, he asks, “Bev didn’t tell you?”

He scratches his cheek. “Is it about you kissing your roommate’s girlfriend?”

“She kissed me. And they’ve broken up. And no, that’s not it.”

“Then no, Bev d-d-didn’t tell me.”

It would be easier if she had. But Bev wouldn’t be Bev if she went spilling Richie’s secrets to all their friends.

So Richie has to say it. Which he can. He can say it. Out loud. To Bill. He can form the words with his mouth and speak truth to what has been weighing on him since—

“Dude, you’re crushing your fries,” Bill says.

Richie looks down. Squished potatoes squirt from his clenched fist. “Shit.” He tosses them back into the takeout bag.

“Relax, it’s just me. You can t-t-tell me anything.”

He nods. He takes a breath. And another breath. And then he just starts talking. “Yeah, I can tell you anything. It’ll be fine. So I am going to say… I am going to announce—just, um, actually, before that. What—” He adjusts his glasses. “—what would you say if I told you I was… If I said I was gay?”

Richie’s armpits prick painfully with sweat. 

Bill’s brows rise the most incremental amount as he finishes chewing. He swallows and says, “I’d say you’d wasted a lot of t-t-time on pussy jokes, Rich.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Was it wasted if I was having fun?”

“Did you meet somebody?”

Richie wants to throw up. “It was a hypothetical.”

“A hypothetical you’ve been denying since you were ten,” Bill retorts. “With the aforementioned pussy jokes.”

His chest clenches. He frantically starts to backtrack. “Yeah, whatever, I was just asking. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been drowning in pussy up here—”

“You’ve had time for girls between seeing Eddie?”

Richie jumps up to pace, hands shaking. What was he thinking? Why did he put this into the universe? How was he supposed to take it back now? 

This is all on him, but he’s gonna blame Bill. “I don’t know what the hell you’re saying, dude. I didn’t mean anything, okay? Just forget it—”

Bill slides off the hood and takes hold of his shoulders. He’s frowning. “Hey. I just want you to be happy, okay? That’s all that matters. D-d-don’t worry about anything else.”

Richie nods, avoiding his eye. He focuses on Bill’s hands on his shoulders, his presence a steadying force as always. 

Happy. Is Richie happy? Dumb question. He’s fucking miserable, for a slew of reasons, and has been for… too long, probably.

He looks down at his ratty shoelaces.

Will coming out _ make _ Richie happy? No way to know, but it should remove this fucking cinder block weighing on his chest, right? It’ll give him an answer, one way or another.

“Bill, I—I think I’m gay.”

Bill yanks Richie into a hug hard enough to steal the air from him. Richie clings to the back of his jacket. He might still be shaking. 

“It’s okay,” Bill says.

“It’s okay?” Richie repeats dumbly.

“It’s okay, it’s great, it’s f-f-fantastic,” Bill says. “Whatever you want it to be. I’m here for you, okay? Always.”

He digs his forehead into Bill’s shoulder. In a small voice, he says, “Like, I’m _ gay _, Bill.”

“Yeah.”

“I like guys.”

“I know what it means.”

Richie releases a shuddering breath.

Bill shifts in their hug, and he’s muffled by Richie’s hair. “I know, Rich.”

And hasn’t he always?

Richie swallows a sob. But it’s okay. Because Big Bill’s here, and he’s rubbing his back. Bill’s here, and he says it’s okay.

Relief flows through his eyes in a prickling moisture. He can’t help it. Maybe he shouldn’t even try. What’s denying himself got him so far? Unshakable fear and self-loathing.

Eventually they return to eating, even though the food’s gone cold. They finish their meal in a silence that isn’t quite easy, because there’s a book’s worth of words running through Richie’s mind, and he can feel Bill half-starting a dozen questions, but it’s not awkward. It’s settled, but expectant.

As they’re getting back in the car, Bill breaks it with, “So, Eddie though.”

Richie’s slick palm slips on the seatbelt he’s snapping in place. “What about him?”

“You haven’t told him?”

“No.” 

“Then when?” He quirks a brow, but with none of the attitude Stan manages to pack into the same small motion.

Richie crosses his arms and mumbles, “None of your business.”

Bill laughs at the absurdity of the assertion; everything that any of the losers did was everybody else’s business.

He backs up the car, but he’s still glancing at Richie waiting for a real answer.

“I’m working up to it,” Richie says as Bills pulls onto the road.

“Working up to it?” He sounds sceptical, like he doesn’t believe Richie will actually do it.

Richie twists in his seat to face him, pulse suddenly racing. “You won’t tell him?”

He meets his eye, and it’s a promise. “No, Rich. This is yours.”

_ His _. What a dubious honour.

The most sensible way to work up to it, Richie decides, is to tell everyone else first. It’s practice.

Once he’s back at school, he gives Ben a call.

He eases into it, listening to Ben’s spring break activities (catching up on essays and projects) first. 

“Yeah, how’s all that archaeology stuff going?” Richie asks conversationally.

A beat passes. “You mean architecture?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“No. You said archaeology. I’m not digging up dinosaurs, Richie.”

He snorts. “Neither are archaeologists. You ever see _ Jurassic Park _? They’re paleontologists.”

He sighs, but it’s good-natured. “No, I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Of course you will. I’m a font of knowledge.”

He hums like when he’s being too polite to argue.

“Well that sucks you spent all your time off doing school work,” Richie continues.

“I like it.”

“Nerd.”

“That’s not news,” Ben dismisses. “Did you go anywhere? A bunch of people from my program went to Miami for what sounded like a real wild time.”

“I saw Bill at his parents’ place.”

“Awesome! What about Eddie?”

“_ Ben _,” Richie groans, flopping onto his bed.

“What? He keeps asking about you.”

He buries his face in his pillow. “What d’you say?”

“Huh?” 

By a stroke of luck, he was too muffled by the pillow for Ben to hear the question. Instead of repeating it, he aims his mouth toward the phone and says, “Can I tell you something? Not Eddie related?”

“Uh, I guess. You’ve stopped measuring your dick, right?” Ben asks.

“Yeah, it can’t get any bigger than this.”

He laughs. “Okay, if it’s not anything more about your dick, then go ahead. You can tell me anything.”

“You don’t wanna hear about my dick? That’s homophobic.”

“Huh?”

Oh, that’s the easiest segue Richie’s mouth had ever spat out. Who could’ve possibly guessed that humour would help him?

But now he has to follow up. With _ not _ a joke. That’s the tough part.

“Sorry, lemme try that again.” Richie takes a deep breath. “I’m gay.”

He said it! All by himself. And it kind of feels like he just got doused with frigid, ice cold water, but it’s not painful.

“Oh? Um?” A book slams shut on Ben’s side of the phone. “What?”

“I’m gay.” Another bucket of water. 

Richie rolls off his bed to check that his door is locked and then stands by the window, the farthest he can get from where any roommates passing in the hallway would be able to hear him.

“Like—like gay for pussy?” Ben asks.

“What?”

“Like you joked one time that if the definition of a lesbian is liking pussy, then you’re a lesbian????” The extra question marks are evident in his tone.

Richie winces. His jokes weren’t always helpful. Especially when they were bad to begin with.

He opens his mouth to explain, and it’s so dry. His hands are shaking. He’s already said it twice, can he do it again? He can still back out. Ben’s giving him ample opportunity to excuse himself and lock the closet door behind him.

But if he can’t tell Ben, then he’d definitely never be able to get the words out to Eddie. It doesn’t even _ matter _ if Ben knows.

“No, not like that.” Richie crosses an arm over his chest, taking a moment to compose himself so his voice doesn’t crack. “Like _ gay _-gay. Like gay for… guys. It’s not…” His voice goes small. “It’s not a joke.”

“Oh,” Ben says, hushed. Then he turns loud, exuberant. “Well, that’s great, then! Con—congratulations? I—wow. Okay. I wasn’t expecting such news on this Wednesday evening.”

Richie wonders, vaguely, what that’s supposed to mean as he shakily lowers himself into his desk chair. 

“You’ve told Bill already, right?” Ben says.

“Uh, yeah.”

“And Bev?”

“Basically.”

“And Eddie.”

Richie covers his face with his hand, and hums in the negative.

Ben gasps softly. “You told me before Eddie?”

“It’s not a competition.”

“Well, I’m still honoured you told me. Thank you.”

“You’re… welcome?” This phone call has been a fucking experience.

“Yeah, of course.” Ben pauses, which lets Richie breathe for a second. “I said—I said congratulations at first, but I’m not sure—was that right?”

“Um, I guess,” Richie says. 

He doesn’t really have expectations from these conversations. Acceptance, he supposes, is the goal. But he doesn’t want them to have known what he was hiding, either. He doesn’t want all those years of denial and repression to have been a stupid and useless waste of time. The least it could’ve been was believable.

So ‘congratulations’ was fine.

“Okay. Awesome,” Ben says definitively. Richie’s love for Ben swells in that moment. “Will you admit you like New Kids on the Block now?”

“No!”

About two weeks after he talked to Bill, Richie gets a call while he’s dumping his hamper of clean laundry into his drawers, because he needs the basket again for the dirty clothes that have accumulated since the last time he did laundry.

“This is a weird joke, Richie,” Mike says, with no greeting. Everybody who has Richie’s number is completely devoid of phone etiquette.

“What is?”

“Your latest letter,” Mike begins. “Packed with vital information as always, it describes a shwarma you had from a food truck—”

“It was life-changing, I’m gonna try to ship one to you—”

“And then at the end it says ‘P.S. I’m a homosexual’.”

Richie’s breath catches, but he sounds normal when he replies, “I know. I wrote it.”

“What does that _ mean _?”

“Post script. You live at the library, shouldn’t you know that?”

“Richie, I know this isn’t how you’re coming out to me.”

“Why not?” God, he is _ sweating _. He locks the door again and huddles in the corner.

“Who comes out in a letter?” 

“Anybody, if they want. Are you putting restrictions on my community?”

Mike sighs. “You’re the weirdest person in my life.”

“It’s because I’m gay.”

Joking, keep it casual, keep it cool. It gets marginally easier every time.

“You’re serious?”

“Yes!” But not too jokey. Ugh. “Gay. For guys. Homosexual, I put it in the letter and everything. Are you the first librarian who can’t read?”

He sighs again, longer this time. He asks expectantly, “You been nervous about telling people, Richie?”

“Uh…” He laughs awkwardly. “I mean, _ yeah _.”

“Yeah,” Mike repeats with a gentleness that’s entirely too telling. Because he understands what Richie’s jokes and deflections in this conversation were for, and now maybe he’s looking back on _ all _ of Richie’s jokes and coming to the same conclusion.

Richie slides down the wall and sits on the floor, knees finally giving out. He stretches one leg in front of him and leans his elbow on the other.

“Is that—” Mike begins tentatively. “Are you happy about it? Is New York that… accepting?”

“If uh…” He clears his throat. “I think if I wasn’t happy I’d have kept lying to myself about it. So I guess so.”

Mike hums, letting Richie continue.

“And New York’s accepting enough, I think I’ll be alright. But I’m just telling you guys for now. Thought you all deserved to know.”

“Well, I appreciate it. Has it been going okay?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, it’s been good.”

“I’m happy to hear it,” Mike says. And he really does sound happy for Richie. “That mean I’m the last loser to know?”

“Why is everyone so obsessed with the order I’m coming out?”

He pauses to think. “So we can respectfully talk about you behind your back? Once you’ve already told us.”

“What’re you gonna talk about?”

“How proud we are of you.”

Richie hides his blushing face in his elbow. “Don’t say shit like that to me, Mike.”

Mike chuckles, and the rich sound warms Richie as much as his words. Not his next words, however. 

“What did Eddie say?”

“You’re… you’re not the last one to know.”

His incredulous response comes after a moment of stunned silence. “You haven’t told _ Eddie? _ Are you _ sure _ you’re sure about this?” 

“Yeah, he’s not my keeper,” Richie grumbles, defeated.

His friends asking about Eddie just get harder. Like a thorn needling ever-deeper into his side.

Mike makes a disbelieving noise. “It have anything to do with him moving back here?”

Richie groans like he’s dying. “Dude, shut the fuck up about that.”

He changes the topic from Eddie with a sympathetic ease. “You still got no fucking manners, huh?”

“You’re the one who started talking without even _ greeting _ me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not used to talking to you, am I? You keep mailing me letters.”

“You keep writing back,” Richie retorts with a smile. “And it’s still your turn.”

Stan’s in New York for a chess tournament, because he’s a nerd. Like, it’s the district finals or whatever and it’s very impressive, but still. It’s nerd stuff.

Stan calls him up and invites Richie to hang out in his hotel room on the last night he’s there.

“Thanks for letting me know you were in town,” Richie says once he’s investigated the room. Beige walls, brass accents. A blowdryer in the bathroom and everything. 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Richie pockets a hotel pen. “I mean, you _ did _ wait until the last possible second to tell me.”

“I didn’t want to get distracted.”

“You said your final set of matches are tomorrow. Aren’t I the biggest distraction right now?”

“I don’t care if I win. I just wanted to be a finalist.”

“Then congratulations, you’ve already won.” Richie tips an imaginary hat. “I’m sure you’ll be king of the nerds anyway.”

Stan finishes setting up chest pieces on a little table and points at the seat across from him for Richie to join him.

Still standing, Richie moves a piece at random. “How’s your girlfriend?”

Stan moves it back into place, restarting the game for him. His lips twitch with a smile. “She’s amazing. Now play to win, Tozier.”

“All you wanna do in New York is play chess? We could like, go to a museum. About birds? A bird museum?” He pops his brows a few times enticingly.

“We can ask the concierge about bird museums after I kick your ass at chess.”

Richie rolls his eyes and sits, making a different move on the board. 

He casts his mind back to Stan teaching him chess for the first time, after both Richie’s dad and grandmother had failed to do so. Because it was boring. But Stan always knew how to get Richie involved in lame-ass shit. Like turning chess into a competitive sport, and or telling him there was a bird called the blue footed booby.

“Mr. Kaspbrak sends his regards,” Stan says.

“Huh?”

“Since you’re treating him like a stranger.”

His face creases, waving him off. “Fuck off, Staniel.”

“I will if you talk to Eddie. Seriously, I get off the phone with you, who’s talking about Eddie, just to call Eddie, who talks about _ you _. You can cut out the middle man and just talk to each other.”

“I told you,” Richie groaned. “The last time I called him—it wasn’t good.”

“I know. And I recall a late night conversation where you were absolutely wrecked—”

“You exaggerate—”

“You think that because you were drunk. I was stone-cold sober. You were a mess, because of Eddie going back. Now he’s still going back and you’re… acting like he’s already gone?” His brows pop with incredible attitude. “What are you doing, Rich?”

Richie shrugs.

Stan pokes a pawn at him “You two are so stubborn together. The perfect annoying match.”

Richie slumps in his seat. The perfect match. Maybe. 

He moves a rook with a flick of his wrist. “How’s he doing?”

He send him the flattest of looks. “Spectacular. How do you think?”

“Stan…”

He knows. Richie _ knows _ he’s being shitty. But he’s convinced himself that after telling Stan, he’ll be able to talk to Eddie. He’s got a goal. He can do it.

“You can call him from here, if you want,” Stan says.

“What?”

“Isn’t that what you’re thinking about?”

“No.” Richie rolls a pawn between his palms, stalling the game.

“Well, do it soon. Before he turns from sad to pissed off. You know there’s gonna be a fine line between him being relieved and reaming you out.”

Richie nods. “I just—I have to tell him in person.”

“Tell him what?” Stan grabs the pawn out of his hand and sticks it on the board. Richie moves it, because Stan would’ve won in two moves with that placement.

Stan smirks.

“I’m gay,” Richie says. 

The back of his neck burns.

“Well, I should fucking hope so,” Stan says without missing a beat. He tilts his head. “I _ guess _ that’s important enough to wait to tell him in person.”

Richie allows himself a small smile. It still feels strained as it slides across his face. “Why did I hate myself for this all through high school?”

“Just high school?” he asks dryly.

Richie flips him off.

Stan makes his move on the board. He answers Richie’s question, even though he doesn’t expect him to. “Because you were scared. It was dangerous. And the whole… thing. We all lived in it, you know? The fear.” He sits back, hands clasped on the tabletop as he waits for Richie to go. “But you’re safe now, right? Saf_ er? _ Safe-ish?”

Memories spring to mind, of Jordan’s vein popping, and the stand-up comic shaking with rage, but there’s also Clara being completely unfazed about whatever Richie and Eddie were, and being able to travel home in peace with Bryant. 

“Safe as I can be, I guess.”

“Good. That’s what’s important.”

Richie moves the only piece he can, which greatly reduces the next couple of moves he can take.

“So what’re you gonna do about Eddie?” Stan asks, doggedly coming back to the topic at hand.

“Cry about it, I guess.”

“I mean, you’ve already done that. Did you have a step two?” 

Richie’s silent. He knows what he has to do.

Stan smugly plops his queen into a winning square. “Checkmate, Tozier.” He grins at him from across the table. “What’s your next move?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five down, one to go! (I figure Richie already had his moment with Bev, so we didn't need to rehash that.)  
Just Eddie left! It might take me more than a week to post, because I wanna get chap 13 and the lil epilogue chapter out on the same day. Also chap 13 is like 6k, and I don't wanna split it in two because the place where it makes sense to split is mean (you'll see...)  
But comments always make me work faster!  
Thanks for reading!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! I know I said these chapters might take longer, but I really want to finish posting this fic so I can focus on the other ones I've got in the works (one of which is the sequel to this), so here we are on schedule!  
I hope this lives up to everybody's expectations!

Richie’s tossing random shirts and socks in his backpack, trying to ignore the time glaring at him from his alarm clock. The next train leaves in thirty minutes and he’s not even out of his room yet. He finds his wallet under a pair of jeans and decides that what he’s got packed already is sufficient.

His phone rings just as he’s throwing himself out of his room, so he ignores it and takes the stairs two at a time. 

He’s not waiting for the next train in an hour—he’d been patient long enough. If it was up to him, he’d have taken the first train to Eddie’s after leaving Stan, but he’s respecting Eddie time instead by showing up unannounced on a Friday afternoon instead of the middle of the week, when Eddie wouldn’t skip classes to hang out anyway.

Richie bounds to the front door, still struggling to zip his bag shut, and is greeted by a torrential downpour outside.

“Shit.” He tears through the front closet for an umbrella, or a rain jacket, or just a good wide-brimmed hat.

The living room phone rings. 

And is that a coincidence, or does someone _ really _ need to get in touch with Richie?

He grabs the phone off the couch and gets back to digging through the closet, though his options are quickly dwindling.

“Go for Tozier,” he says.

“Ugh, how is that more obnoxious than all your other stupid greetings?”

It’s Eddie.

Richie drops the school-branded umbrella he’s yanked from between two mismatched running shoes.

“Eds,” he says dumbly. 

“Hi.”

“How, uh, how are you?”

“How _ am _ I?” he repeats like it’s stupid, because when have they ever done smalltalk. But it feels like a safe question, and Richie wants to know the answer.

“I mean, I’m good,” Richie says, even though nobody’s asked. “I’m doing… better.”

“I’m not going back to Derry,” Eddie blurts, as if the fifteen seconds their conversation has spanned is the longest he could bear to keep his news inside. “I’m glad you’re doing better.”

_ “What?” _ It’s a shout. Richie needs to be sure he heard correctly.

“I’m not going back.”

He bounces on his toes. “You’re not going back?”

“I’m not!”

Relieved laughter bubbles forth from the very heart of him. “Eds! Fuck! Thank god, oh my god. What—how?”

Eddie laughs in kind, and the carefree sound lights sparks in Richie’s chest. “I just got off this hour-long screaming match with my mom—”

Richie’s grin is frozen in place five seconds after the line goes dead, until Jordan walks in from the kitchen.

“You’re not allowed to use that phone,” he says in his dumb deep voice. 

“Did you—did you unplug the receiver?” Richie accuses. He’d mostly ignored Richie after the movie fight disaster, but since Clara dumped him he’s become increasingly annoying as a roommate.

Jordan shrugs.

“I’m literally on my way out the door!”

“So fuck off. I need to make a call.”

“Fuck you!” Richie hurls the phone at him and grabs his backpack and the umbrella and runs out the door without closing it. 

He figures out the umbrella is broken half a block down the street after it almost stabs his eye out, so he ditches it on a neighbour’s lawn and sprints to the train station.

They can finish their conversation in person.

He’s fully drenched by the time he finds a seat, but he’s so far beyond the mild discomfort that being wet and cold brings.

Richie’s mind races. He’s convinced it’s going faster than the train, because it’s taking forever to reach his destination—Eddie, who’s not going back to Derry. He’s staying a train ride away. He’s staying safe. He’s staying away from his mom. He’s staying.

Since Eddie made his announcement, Richie’s felt so out of joint that he almost forgot what living without that weight on his chest felt like. But now it’s gone, and he’s gonna see Eddie again, and instead of wasting time lamenting about Eddie’s fate together, Richie can just… come out.

His stomach’s already roiling. 

Coming out to Eddie is gonna be so different from the others, because the other thing Richie’s been thinking on, about Eddie specifically, is too fragile to put words to—a glass balloon of a situation. Because what if Eddie doesn’t want to hear about it? 

He doesn’t know if he can do it. Not right now, when Richie’s just got him back.

His clothes had just started to turn from soaked to damp when he’s getting off the train, and then he gets soaked all over again on the way to Eddie’s. He barely notices. 

He hadn’t told Eddie he was coming, so when he gets to his door he just hopes he’s still home, and knocks, knocks, knocks— 

“If this is about condoms,” he hears Eddie’s muffled voice as he’s opening the door, “I’m not a fucking… pharmacy.”

He blinks at Richie. He frowns at the phone in his hand. Slowly presses the end call button. Looks back up at Richie.

“You’re soaking fucking wet.” He yanks him inside, and then picks up right where they left off. “So, you know how my mom was supposed to mail the school doctor’s notes saying she was seconds away from palliative care so they’d let me defer?”

Eddie's wearing a too-big T-shirt tucked into his trademark little shorts, because while the student housing Richie lives in is an ice box, student _dorms_ appear to be heated by stoking the burning fires of underclassmen’s hopes and dreams. Richie’s had to wipe the fog from his glasses three times already.

“Uh huh.” Richie nods, kicking off his shoes and taking off his sopping jacket.

“So she admits that there wasn’t a problem with the notes, she just decided that her word should be all the proof I need, even though I told her it was the school asking.” Eddie hangs Richie’s jacket up next to his own on the coat rack. “And when she finally coughs up a letter from Dr. Kimeka—get this? It was for fucking pneumonia! That she got months ago, and is already fully recovered from at this point.”

Eddie goes on, and his cheeks glow a soft pink, his big dark eyes lit with a frenzied relief. 

That’s when Richie realizes it’s his shirt Eddie’s wearing, a faded band tee with a ripped collar that shows off Eddie’s clavicle. Eddie said he was gonna throw it out because of not only the collar rip but the hole in the armpit big enough to be a third sleeve, but now he's _wearing_ it like pajamas. 

Richie’s heart lurches like it’s trying to crawl out of his chest and prostrate itself at Eddie’s feet.

“I’m gay,” Richie announces.

“—trying to convince me it’s a chronic illness—_ what _?” His face is a twist of confusion.

Shit. Fuck.

“Thank god you don’t have to go back,” Richie skips back to the conversation they’d been in the middle of before he rudely interrupted. He wrings out the hem of his shirt just to give his hands something to do. “Dodged a fucking bullet there. I’m really—I missed you, man, you know? I dunno—”

“You’re making a puddle on my floor,” Eddie interrupts.

Richie raises his hands. His shirt continues to drip onto the carpet without his help. “Sorry.”

He doesn’t go on, because he can’t quite articulate the question of whether making their friends call Eddie on his behalf made Eddie not-mad at him for not talking to him for three weeks.

“Stop.” Eddie spins his hands in a reverse motion. “What did you say?”

Richie swallows. “I missed you.”

“Before that.”

“Thank god.”

He huffs. “_Before _—”

“I’m gay.”

It’s silent for a moment. Well, that’s not true. Richie can hear his heartbeat pounding away in his ears just fine.

Eddie looks like he’s got complex math equations running circles in his head. Brow creased, he finally says, “You’re _ gay_?”

Richie nods. He doesn’t even flinch. He’s kinda proud.

“Since when?” Eddie asks.

“Um, I think it’s like a lifetime thing—”

“A _ lifetime_?” It’s squeak.

“I mean,” Richie lifts a shoulder, “depending on who you ask, I guess.”

“But you weren’t—why?”

_“Why?”_

“How?” 

“How?” Richie raises his brows.

“How long—” Eddie stops. Gives himself a shake. “How long have you known that you’re gay, Richie?”

Shit, he liked the unintelligible questions better. This one has substance. This one he has to answer.

Richie tilts his head back, trying to keep it casual as he counts the time. “Like two weeks.”

He scoffs. “Fuck off, you’re not serious.”

And that kind of hurts.

Richie hadn’t wanted the rest of the losers to have any inkling about his leanings, but when he came out to Eddie, he thought he might have a fresh response. One that would make Richie’s glass balloon situation a little sturdier. And retroactively give an actual reason to Richie telling all the other losers first, so they wouldn’t be shocked if…

But that was stupid to hope for, wasn’t it?

“Why would I joke about that?” Richie says. His voice isn’t as steady as he wants.

Eddie looks at him long enough to make Richie twitch. He finally says, still in disbelief, “You decided you were gay two weeks ago?”

“Yeah?”

“Why?”

Richie doesn’t know what to say. It’s not like it isn’t Eddie’s business, like it’s not his place to ask. Of course Eddie’s entitled to a ‘why’, to a step-by-step recap of his coming out story, since Eddie was there for so much of it. But Richie can’t explain without it becoming a confession. And Eddie hasn’t given any indication he’d be happy about that.

So instead Richie deflects. “What’s your deal? Everybody else was fine with it.”

“Everybody else?” Eddie rocks back on his heels like a flurry of wind’s hit him. The look on his face is kind of incredulous and kind of offended. “You told everybody else already?”

Richie nods, palms sweating.

“Right, yeah.” Eddie runs through a few facial tics; pressing his lips together, creasing his brow, shaking his head, before he responds with, “Well I’m glad you had time to come out to all our friends, what with your busy schedule of telling them to call me because _ your _ selfish ass couldn’t be bothered.”

And that hurts more.

Richie pushes his wet bangs off his forehead. “I’m sorry, I—I thought they could help—”

“You’re not fucking replaceable.” And it’s a sweet sentiment, but Eddie hurls it like a rock. “I was worried about you too, asshole. Whether you were passed out in the fucking gutter, or in a pool of your own puke—”

“Is that really what you think I get up to without you?”

“I wouldn’t know, because you weren’t talking to me,” he retorts.

“You had my number the whole time.”

He curls his hands. “What if you didn’t answer?”

“I—” The air is well and truly punched out of Richie. Was Eddie _ that _ worried Richie would wind up passed out in a ditch? Or did he just think Richie wouldn’t have answered on purpose? He goes for an apology. “Look, I’m sorry. I was planning to come here even before you called, to try to help because I know it wasn’t fair to you, but—you’re right, it was selfish.”

Eddie nods again, jerkily, because he’s not actually agreeing with Richie. “Wow, you’re finally becoming self-aware—you’re gay, you’re selfish, what will you realize about yourself next?”

The sarcasm sets him off. “Why the _ fuck _ are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad,” Eddie snaps, even though he clearly is. “I’d just like more details on how you realized you were gay in the short amount of time we weren’t talking. Like, did you go around macking on dudes—”

“Just _ you_, dumbass.” 

Which is not, it turns out, the best way to unearth that topic.

Eddie’s brows go all the way up his forehead. His tongue clicks.

Shit.

“And?” Eddie says, almost threateningly.

“And what?”

“Anything to say about that?”

Richie’s completely unmoving, as if his safety was predicated on stillness like those kids in _ Jurassic Park _ hiding from the T-Rex. 

His heart hasn’t gotten the memo, however, and is going a mile a minute. So he blames his heart on drawing unwanted attention by beating cartoon-like against his ribcage.

“Like what?” Richie says.

Eddie spreads his arms. “Like—_why_.”

“Why… what?”

“Why did you kiss me?” The question is so simple. Asked at a level volume, like Eddie’s not about to go off, even though he definitely is.

“I… wanted to,” Richie says slowly.

It’s not the right answer.

Eddie’s eyes roll back in his head. His hands go up with them. “I know you _ wanted _ to, Richie! You do whatever you want! Like showing up at my door unannounced, or interrupting my story about not returning to my abusive mother so that you can come out—you just do whatever!”

Richie ducks his head. There’s a lump in his throat that’s hard to speak through. “Did you want me to, like, go?”

“No, I don’t want you to _ go! _” he exclaims incredulously. “I want you to stop looking like a puppy that’s getting yelled at.”

“So stop yelling at me!” Richie’s eyes are hot as he scrubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t know what to say to get Eddie to stop being mad, because he doesn’t understand why he’s this mad in the first place. Sarcastically, he says, “Well I’m sorry, Eddie. For doing whatever I want, and for being selfish, and for being gay—”

“Shut the—don’t. _ Don’t_.” He sticks a trembling finger at him, mouth set in a hard line. “Don’t fucking apologize for shit that’s not a problem.”

“Well, you’re yelling at me like it’s a problem!”

“My problem,” Eddie starts loudly, and it’s so fucking quintessentially _ Eddie _ that Richie almost laughs, “is you calling me a dumbass for acting like we never kissed, when we don’t talk about that, Richie! Why would I bring it up? But _ you _ did.” Eddie slices a hand at him. “Isn’t that why you left me for last? Unless you’ve been kissing Bill, too.”

“No.” Richie lurches forward. “Just you.”

His eyes shine. “Lucky me!”

Richie reaches for his arm. He half-expects Eddie to whirl out of his reach and go straight into another rant, but he allows Richie to take his elbow, just below where his shirt sleeve ends.

_ Richie’s _ shirt, the reminder of which is another pang in his chest. It means something, this all means something, right?

“Because it’s only the great mystery of my life,” Eddie picks up speed and vulnerability frighteningly quick. “_Why _ Richie Tozier kissed me. Why he kept kissing me. Why he stopped. Why he did it again when he was drunk and high at a basement rave.” His chest shudders with a breath and he steps back, meeting Richie’s eye defiantly. “And acted like it never happened.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue, words to match Eddie’s energy, but it gets stuck in Richie’s throat like always.

So he dives for Eddie’s mouth instead.

Eddie jerks back. “_No_.”

Oh god.

Richie’s entire existence starts crumbling around him. Because he tried to kiss Eddie, and he said no. Which feels so much like the end of the world that he can’t believe he’s still standing, still gaping at Eddie like a fish and— 

He can’t—he can’t be here. He can’t be anywhere.

“Just tell me—” Eddie starts, shaky and demanding all at the same time. 

But Richie’s done. He’s out, he’s so out of here.

He grabs his shoes and his bag.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Eddie tries to grab him.

He flies out the door.

“Richie!”

Eddie slams the door when he’s halfway down the hall.

He gets to the train station, and there’s not a train going where he wants for an hour and a half. He storms back outside. It’s stopped raining, but he left his jacket at Eddie’s so wetness has been replaced by frigidity. 

Richie’s numb anyway.

If he could zip out of his skin and let it rest for a while maybe he could calm down, but he can’t so he’s pacing, pulling at his hair and replaying the past half hour in excruciating detail.

How can Richie come back from this? How’s he supposed to go home, go back to classes, live his life, when Eddie is—he’s pissed, and he’s hurt, and god, what if he hates him?

What if he didn’t, but he does now?

Eddie used to wanna kiss him, but now he doesn’t. What does that mean?

Richie passes a pay phone five times before it occurs to him to use it.

Bill doesn’t answer. Bev doesn’t answer. He punches in a third number by rote, and finally the line clicks.

“Hello?”

“Ben,” Richie gasps. It’s the first word he’s gotten out since leaving Eddie’s.

“Richie? What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m gonna throw up.” He really, really does. There’s too much roiling in his stomach, emotions clawing at his chest; his body is revolting, even it doesn’t want to associate with him right now.

“What happened?”

He takes a scraping breath. “I fucked everything up, Ben. I don’t know how, but I did. Like always.”

“You don’t always fuck everything up,” Ben says soothingly. And he’s an honest guy, so Richie’s predisposed to believe anything he says. It manages to calm him down, just a little. “Let’s start easy, okay? Where are you?”

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “In a phone booth by Eddie’s school. I—I told him I was gay.”

“You two are talking again? That’s fantastic.”

“No, _ Benjamin_, it’s not!” he snaps. “I fucking—don’t know what I did but he’s beyond pissed and he’s sad and he was yelling, and I just—I don’t know what to do.”

“Well that sounds weird,” he says after a moment. “But after we talk about it, I’m sure you can go back to him and work it out, okay?”

And he doesn’t sound condescending or uninterested like when Richie’s mom would say shit like “I’m sure it’ll work itself out”. Ben says it like he believes it, and like he’s right there with Richie in the situation ready to help.

“Okay,” Richie says, letting Ben’s assurances centre him.

“Let’s take it from the top,” Ben says. “How did you say it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you say you were gay like… yourself?” His voice pitches high.

“You mean like an asshole?”

“I mean, when you came out to me you started off by calling me homophobic, so it’s hard to gauge how you’ve been doing this.”

“I didn’t call you homophobic.”

“What? Yes, you did. Because I didn’t wanna hear about your dick.”

Richie’s chest eases with a laugh. “Oh, yeah.”

Ben gives him a moment. Or maybe he gives himself a moment. “Okay, so I still don’t wanna hear about your dick, sorry, I have honestly heard enough about it for many lifetimes, but tell me about happened with Eddie.”

Richie leans against the plexiglass for support. The scratches and graffiti are starting to fog up from his breath. 

What happened with Eddie… Shit, that’s a lot to get through.

“Okay, so backstory, uh—” He wipes a hand over his face. “When we were kids, before we met you, right? We um, we kinda—”

“Are you talking about how you guys used to kiss?”

That brings Richie up short. “Did Bev tell you?”

“No. Eddie did.”

“Why did he tell _ you _?” 

“Why’d you tell Bev?” Bev asks, not as a _ Top that! _ wisecrack response, but more of a nudge to make Richie contemplate.

So he does think about it, even though he doesn’t want to. “I guess… I was trying to figure stuff out. I wanted another opinion.”

“Okay.”

Richie taps his foot. “But what was he trying to figure out?”

“Moving on,” Ben says firmly. “What did Eddie say when you told him you liked him?”

Which rockets Richie to a brand new conversation he hadn’t been prepared for. 

His silence lasts long enough for Ben to ask a follow up. “You—you like him, right?”

“_ Obviously. _”

Richie can only imagine he’s rolling his eyes; the distance between them saving Ben from the duty of looking visibly supportive. “But you didn’t tell him that when you came out?”

“Why would I?”

“Aren’t they connected?”

“You think I’d be able to get through that much—”

Outside the phone booth, a homeless guy with a bushy beard cups his hands at Richie.

Richie waves him away and turns around. “One step at a time, here, dude. You want me to explode?”

Ben releases a long breath.

The homeless guy taps the plexiglass with a pout. 

“For fucks’—” He tucks the phone between his ear and shoulder and reaches for his wallet. “Is this why everyone kept asking me if I’d told Eddie when I came out? You all thought I was gonna do a two for one?”

Did everybody _ know _?

“I think we asked because it’s you and Eddie,” Ben says gently.

“I don’t think there’s a me and Eddie anymore,” Richie says as he shoves a few dollar bills at the guy through the door.

“Oh, thank you, god bless you,” the guy says with a bow, and walks away.

Richie takes hold of the receiver again, muttering, “Yeah, god blesses me. The god of fuck ups, maybe.”

“What was Eddie mad about, specifically?” Ben prods. “Did he tell you anything?”

Richie swallows, throat thickening at reliving their conversation. So he latches onto what Ben said instead. “Why? What did he tell you?”

“Just that you guys used to kiss in secret before… before the summer of our discontent. And then once at a party this year.”

Kiss in secret. That made it sound so dirty. Was Eddie ashamed? Did he blame Richie? Was Richie ruining his life?

“How was he acting, when he told you? Did he do it in his manic Eddie way, or—or like—whispering, or—”

“I’m not giving you a play by play,” Ben says. “Take a breath, okay?”

“I really don’t wanna. It smells like tuna in here.”

He chuckles. “Well, the other option is going back to Eddie and having a frank discussion about your feelings.”

Richie physically flinches at the suggestion. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“Figure out your feelings, and then say them.” And from anyone else it would be a sarcastic reply, but Ben actually means the advice.

It’s still too much for Richie.

“Ben, can you write me a poem?”

“About _ your _ feelings for Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure. It’ll be fifty bucks.”

“What?!”

“Writing is an art, Richie, I can’t just do it for free all the time.”

“How is it _ now _ that you decide to be the funny man?” Richie asks incredulously.

“Because I’m not writing you a poem for Eddie, Richie. Write your own poem.”

“Don’t speak nonsense.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with, Richie?”

“Yeah, did Eddie say I was a good kisser?”

“I’m gonna hang up now. Talk to him. I believe in you.”

Figure out his feelings, and then say them. Why does the most difficult thing in his life sound so easy?

Richie travels slowly back to Eddie’s dorm, using the time to sort out what’s going on inside his head so he can tell Eddie. Though of course, his _ head _ isn’t the problem. It’s his heart. It’s always been his heart with Eddie, and a whole lot of repression and shame and flat-out denial have been stacked up to block his view of that. 

And now there’s new fear, because Eddie’s already said no once tonight. 

Richie gets to the dorm and loiters outside until people who live there let him in, just like every other time he’s visited. He tries to walk straight into Eddie’s room but it’s locked, which is rude.

So he knocks. No answer.

“Eddie?” he says. “Come on.”

But there’s no light on under the door. He’s not there.

Richie slides down the wall to wait. He’s got more time to think, which is technically a good thing but, as always, thinking alone with nothing to do just feels bad.

After a few minutes, Eddie’s RA, Amber, comes up the stairs. She spots him when she’s unlocking her room. “Trashmouth?”

He waves.

“You can’t just sit there, you’re a tripping hazard,” she says.

“Do you know where Eddie is?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“You could be going to murder him.”

“I’m not.”

“You two got into a fight, right?” Amber says, like that’s a reason to plan lethality.

“Look, I will kill anything that tries to kill Eddie. It’s not gonna be me. You gonna tell me where he is, or you want me to sit here all night?”

She sighs. “I saw him by the train station.”

“Seriously? Fucking hell,” he mutters. He walks past her to the stairs.

“You’re _ welcome!” _

So he goes _ back _ to the train station, in the freezing cold, cursing Eddie the whole way.

He’s turning a corner when he sees Eddie in a polkadot rain poncho and track pants. His back’s to Richie because he’s talking to some old bearded guy. 

As Richie gets closer, he realizes it’s the same homeless guy he’d given money to.

“Oh, big glasses?” the guy is saying to Eddie. “He seemed like a nice young man.”

“He’s not,” Eddie says. “He’s an asshole. Did you see where he went?”

“Back to the school? Going that way, anyway.”

Eddie grumbles under his breath and Richie says, “The hell are you doing?”

Eddie turns to face him. He appears to be handing off half his fanny pack to this homeless guy.

Eddie’s face goes from surprised to pleased to pissed off again at seeing Richie. A little tension in Richie’s chest still eases.

“I’m tracking you down through a local,” Eddie says. “Where the hell’d you go?”

“Back to you dorm, dipshit.”

The homeless guy bows with hand sanitizer, polysporin, and bandages clasped in his hands. “Very nice young men, both of you. Thank you.”

He shuffles away and Richie sends Eddie another perplexed look.

“What? You kept telling me to make friends.”

Richie can’t stop the laughter bubbling up his throat.

Eddie bites down on a grin. “So you couldn’t wait longer than five minutes at my dorm? Were you gonna go home already?”

“Your RA said you she saw you over here. Accused me of being a tripping hazard sitting in the hallway, too.”

“You probably were.” 

Richie crosses his arms against the chill. He was nervous, before, but Eddie’s half back to normal, and he’d come looking for Richie, so he couldn’t have fucked things up too bad. Right?

“Oh, here.” Eddie holds out a thick zip-up hoodie.

“This isn’t the jacket I came with,” Richie says, taking it anyway, ready to cram his long limbs into one of Eddie’s little sweaters.

“Yeah, it was still soaking wet, dumbass.”

Richie tugs the hoodie on, and it fits perfectly. He frowns, twisting to inspect the decal on the back for confirmation. It’s his college sweater. “I’ve been looking for this! How many of my clothes do you have, Spaghetti?”

“Well maybe if you paid more attention packing up your shit—”

“What, I’d notice you were stealing half my closet?”

Richie can’t tell if Eddie’s still wearing his ripped shirt under his poncho. He hopes he is.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You can rifle through all my stuff when we’re back at my dorm. Come on.”

Richie zips up his hoodie and follows Eddie.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and keeps sneaking glances at him. He doesn’t look like he’s gonna cry anymore, which is good. Instead he’s got this determination that keeps him looking straight ahead, not at Richie.

Richie wants to grab him, pull him into his arms, wrestle until they get back to his dorm if that means they won’t be apart. 

“Thanks for the sweater,” Richie says instead, when his fingers start to thaw.

“You’d have caught a cold,” Eddie mutters.

Which is love, the kind Richie’s been able to feel since they were kids. The kind where Eddie cares about Richie, and wants him safe. He makes sure he’s warm enough, and soothes him after nightmares, and complains that he’s damaging himself irreparably with alcohol and cigarettes and weed. 

Eddie’s gotta know how Richie shows his love, too, right? In buying a train ticket at the first sign of a breakdown. Offering to leave a party he’d spent two hours convincing him to attend if Eddie was uncomfortable. Making Eddie get friends at school, or having their own friends call him, just to make sure Eddie didn’t have to be alone.

Richie loves him in all those ways. He’s his best friend, that’s easy. But the feelings Ben told him to think about are different. Complicated and wide and _ more _.

More in the way that he knows this thunderous beating in his chest won’t rest until he’s got Eddie in his arms, fitting right where he belongs. More in the way that when he’d held Eddie by the elbows, he gravitated to his mouth. More like he wants to stay the night, sleep in the same bed all tangled up with Eddie even if he’s still mad.

It’s more. It’s something else.

The conviction that Eddie feels the same way suddenly seizes him.

And it’s all too much to hold inside.

But he can’t start spilling his guts out here; there’ll be tears, or kissing, or yelling, or some reaction otherwise unfit for public consumption.

They’re like a minute away from Eddie’s dorm, it’s within sight, so Richie can’t keep up this drudging pace when they’re so close to where they need to be.

He smacks Eddie’s shoulder. “Race ya.”

“What?”

Richie takes off. Tearing across the lawn, cold night air burning his lungs cleaner than smoke. Eddie’s footsteps are right behind him. He catches up quick, and then passes him in a blur. Fucking track star.

Richie grins and presses forward until they reach Eddie’s building.

“I won,” Richie pants, even though he didn’t.

“Yeah, you won second place,” Eddie says as he unlocks the front door.

Richie squeezes past him to get inside first. “Race you up the stairs.”

“Richie—ugh.” Because he can’t argue when Richie’s gonna win.

They run up a flight of stairs, pushing and shoving to get ahead.

They burst onto Eddie’s floor as Amber leaves another student’s room with a box of tissues, rolling her eyes. 

She sees them and nods. “You found him.”

“You can’t just give people my location,” Eddie says, breathing hard. Richie almost trips on his way down the hall, glasses fogged. “He could’ve been after me to kill me.”

Amber shoots Richie a look like ‘I fucking told you so’ before she returns to her room.

Richie rattles Eddie’s doorknob impatiently and Eddie shoulders him out of the way to unlock it. Richie rushes in.

“Hey, so,” Eddie says, kicking off his shoes. “Before we get into anything, it was brought to my attention that I maybe missed a step in your whole coming out thing.” 

“Oh, no shit?” Richie’s nervous energy has him bouncing on his toes. He’s still trying to pick the perfect words to express what he feels.

“I maybe thought the support and acceptance aspect of the coming out process could go unsaid, but maybe not.” Eddie tugs at his ear, looking at the ground. “Obviously, I support you, or whatever.” 

“Yes, you sound _ very _ supportive.”

“I am!” He crosses his arms. “And I—had a lot of things on my mind—you literally interrupted me in the middle of a thought—but like, yeah. Richie. Come _ on_.”

Eddie opens his arms and Richie flings himself into the hug like he’s starving for it, twisting his fingers in the back of his shirt (Eddie took his poncho off—he _ is _ still wearing Richie’s band tee). Eddie hooks his chin over his shoulder, because Richie’s leaned down to get as much out of the hug as possible.

“I’m sorry.” Eddie strokes the hair at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t mean to blow up like that.”

“I know.”

“I just—I missed you.” Richie hears him swallow. “You’re not selfish.”

“I’m a little selfish,” he argues.

“No, not with this. I—I appreciate you having them all call me more. I needed it,” Eddie says quietly. “So I didn’t mean what I said. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Richie says. 

They pull apart, but they’re still close. Eddie’s freckles are fading, but they’ll be back in full force once summer comes around. Just like every year since Eddie was six. Richie knows him inside and out.

He hopes.

“So,” Eddie says a little shakily after they stared at each other for probably a solid minute. He takes another step back. “Picking up where we left off before you ran away—you’re going to use words, and I’m going to listen to those words, and then we will talk using words. You got it?”

Richie nods. “I love words. Use ‘em every day.”

Eddie smiles. “Go for it, then.”

He takes a breath to fortify himself like when he’s about to present a script in class.

“I wasn’t macking on other dudes when we weren’t talking,” is what Richie starts with. “I was—I was just thinking about you, Eds. I’ve been thinking about you a lot this year, more than last year, because I was mostly drunk for the express purpose of _ not _ thinking. It was hard being away from you guys, you know?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. Then, “What did you think about?”

“Huh?”

His cheeks bloom red as he explains, “When you were thinking about me?”

“Oh.” Richie pushes his glasses up his nose. “Lots of things. Um. About how we used to…”

Eddie nods, says softly, “Uh huh.”

“And how at the party…”

“Yeah.”

“And when you were at my place and we were watching _ Jurassic Park_.”

Eddie’s got the same look on his face now. He knows exactly where Richie’s head’s at because he’s paying way too much attention. He’s waiting for something, and Richie just needs to know what.

Like, should he say he has feelings for him, or he likes him, or he _ like _ likes him, or… just drop it all on him with no sense of mystery? 

“How much do you wanna know, Eds?” 

“Everything,” he says with immediate conviction. “No jokes, just… tell me.”

Richie nods.

So, alright. Fuck it, just like jumping off the cliff at the quarry.

“I kissed you because I wanted to,” Richie says. “I wanted to because you’re my best friend. I stopped because I was scared you’d get hurt if anyone found out. I kissed you at the rave because I couldn’t _ not_. I never talked about it because I didn’t know what to say even though you’re my _ best friend.” _

It’s a weighty declaration, a possessive statement that means too much: _ His_. His best friend. His to protect, viciously and recklessly. His to think about first thing in the morning. His to care for like nothing else in his life. 

“And I want to kiss you all the time.” Richie’s voice doesn’t waver. 

Eddie nods, just the tip of his chin dipping in agreement. He’s hanging on every word. 

In this moment, Richie isn’t scared. He’s proud.

“I am… _ in _ love with you, Eddie. How couldn’t I be? You’re a fucking part of me.”

Eddie’s lips part in a small smile. There’s a pink high in his cheeks. “You know I’ve wanted you to kiss me again almost every day since we were twelve?” 

“I did not know that,” Richie says faintly.

Eddie takes a step closer. He’s breathless as he speeds up, “I’d lay awake at night thinking about you. I wondered if you stopped because I was a bad kisser, or I was too annoying, or if you got worried, like I did, that people could sense our—our wrongness.” He wipes a hand over his mouth. His voice is so small. “I hated that feeling.”

Richie’s breath catches. “Do you still worry about that?” 

He shakes his head. His jaw is set. “We’re _ right_, we’re so fucking right, Richie.” Eddie takes his face in both hands. “I fucking love you.”

And Eddie pulls him in to kiss him soundly, perfectly, on the mouth. 

Richie finally wraps his arms around him. He’s free from the jumbled doubt that’s been clouding his mind for longer than he can remember. It’s all clear now. There’s nothing to muse on except the hot drag of Eddie’s lips against his. The silkiness of Eddie’s hair. His hands on Richie’s face, pulling off his glasses. Eddie backing him up until Richie’s knees hit the bed and he sits. 

Eddie doesn’t break their kiss as he straddles him, easy as anything. Richie tilts his head back, because he needs a second to appreciate the solid weight of him in his lap.

So Eddie mouths along his throat instead. Richie groans.

“What?” Eddie asks in his ear. “I’m doing it right, right?”

“Yeah, fucker.” He squeezes his waist. “How would you kiss me wrong?”

“I mean,” he says breathily, “we haven’t even brushed our teeth.”

“You’re a fucking liar.” He grins. “You taste like mint.”

He grins back, teeth shining. He drops his forehead against his. “I love you.”

Richie kisses him on the cheek. “I love you.” A kiss on the nose. “I love you.” A kiss on the jaw. “I love you.”

He says it with ever-increasing awe, that Eddie’s letting him kiss him, that he’s letting himself say exactly how he feels.

Eddie laughs, gazing down at Richie with a brilliant happiness. “I know, isn’t it incredible?”

“It is! You’re wearing my fucking shirt.”

He loops his finger through one of Richie’s curls. “I told you I missed you.”

“Well, this is why I interrupted you when I did.” He tugs at the frayed fabric. “Because you looked so good wearing it—”

“It’s an ugly shirt!” Eddie argues. “It belongs in the garbage.”

Richie kisses his clavicle through the tear in the collar. “Y’know, it might actually look better on the floor than on you…”

His brows rise high on his forehead. “And you’d look better lying down.”

Richie grins recklessly, wide and excited with no attempt to hide it. He gets comfortable against the pillows as Eddie resituates over his thighs, already having lost his shirt.

Richie delicately runs his palms over the planes of Eddie’s bare chest, completely unabashed about how enthralled he is. “Fuck, I love you.”

“You can’t say that while staring at my chest."

“No?” He returns his attention to his face. “What about with my eyes closed?” He does so. “Hands behind my back?” He slips his hands under him. “I lov—”

Eddie’s mouth lands on his, absorbing his mumbled declaration. He tugs Richie’s hands free and positions them on his waist. 

“I love you, you dingus,” Eddie laughs. “Now kiss me.”

Richie slips out one more, “I love you, too.” 

Eddie smiles against his lips.

Which is how they come to the long-awaited end of the longest, most winding scenic route conversation they’ve ever had. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *deep breath* WHOO! They kissed! And more importantly, they talked about it!  
I should have the epilogue up either later tonight (maybeeee) or tomorrow. (A bit of it is in Eddie's POV, so we'll get a little more of his thought process, too.)  
Please let me know how you liked this!! I've spent all day polishing it up lmao.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My author's note at the bottom is a little long, so I'll just thank everybody who's read this and commented and kudos'd right now! I super appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad people have enjoyed this as much as I've enjoyed writing it!  
As a heads up, there's some brief heavy make outs in this chap, but nothing graphic (that's for the sequel).  
TW discussion of internalized homophobia

Eddie wakes to sunshine filtering through his curtains, and for a moment he’s convinced that yesterday was a dream made of all his most far-fetched fantasies, because he couldn’t have gotten everything he wanted, right?

But Richie proves him wrong just by being spread out on the bed next to him, shirtless and snoring. 

His fingers flutter over Richie’s cheekbone, and his nose scrunches a little, but otherwise he goes on dozing undisturbed.

“Wow,” Eddie says to himself. 

He gets to kiss Richie whenever he wants. He gets to touch Richie without the pretense of annoying him. He gets to wake up to Richie in his bed, without having to scramble out first thing in the morning for fear of what having Richie so close might awaken in him.

Because Eddie finally found out what’s been bouncing around Richie’s head all this time: it’s love.

Richie loves him. He loves him, he loves him.

His mom would be so mad.

Maybe even angrier than when Eddie told her that pneumonia wasn’t enough to make him throw his whole life off track. Everything she’d put him through, and then trying to trick him? Again, as an adult? Eddie’s never falling for that again.

He flops back against the pillows to let Richie sleep.

He’d wanted Richie to come over this weekend, after Eddie told him that Derry wasn’t happening anymore. He hadn’t expected all this. _ Hoped _, maybe, but he’d never been much of an optimist.

Richie drops an arm around his waist and huddles closer. Eddie draws him in by the shoulders. Part of it out of necessity—they really should push the two twin beds together like Richie suggested while they were making out. But it wouldn’t make a difference; they used to have a whole clubhouse to share, and they still insisted on squeezing into that hammock.

Eddie loves him.

Richie showed up at his door, and Eddie was ready to get right back to normal—but then Richie. _ Came out. _ Without immediately following it up with an explanation akin to: ‘And that’s why I always kissed you! And also I think we should date. Because I like you like that.’

Instead he said he’d been gay for two weeks, while the two of them hadn’t even been talking! The implication of that made Eddie more pissed than he probably had any right to be. It was Richie’s moment, after all. That was the gist of the phone call he’d had with Bev after Richie ran off. 

It was one of the more productive talks he’d had with her lately. When she called him in the middle of a panic attack after Richie called him high off his ass and sounding like Eeyore two steps away from a cliff’s edge, Eddie hadn’t been able to say much. Because Richie was right—Eddie was putting not only himself but _ Richie _ through that torture all on his own. 

So he understood why Richie stopped calling. He didn’t know what kind of conversations they were supposed to be having, especially after Eddie almost let slip how much he felt for him, despite how unfair that would’ve been to both of them with Derry lingering in his future.

But that’s all in the past.

The present is right here in his arms. 

Eddie ducks his nose to Richie’s head and breathes in his greasy hair.

“Are you smelling me while I sleep?” Richie mumbles, eyes closed.

“Yeah. You need a shower.”

“Creep.”

Eddie kisses the furrow between his brows.

His eyes flutter open, and he turns his head to better face Eddie. “Good morning.”

“Hi,” Eddie says quietly, breath taken by the absolute vision of a sleep-dredged Richie in his arms.

Curly dark hair a mess around his face, Richie blinks slowly up at Eddie. He puckers his lips. “Kiss?”

“Have you brushed your teeth?”

He drops his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder. “I think we both know I haven’t.”

“Then how about we keep the mystery of what your morning breath tastes like alive just a little bit longer?”

“You got a mint?” Richie asks, reaching across Eddie to his bedside table.

“Nope.”

So Richie drops himself on Eddie’s chest, perching his chin on top of his folded hands with a lazy grin. Eddie returns it, and winds his fingers through Richie’s hair to scritch at his scalp. 

Richie hums appreciatively, eyes falling closed again.

“You gonna go back to sleep?”

“If you keep doing that.”

“It wasn’t putting you to sleep last night,” Eddie observes. Richie had been pretty vocal about enjoying Eddie’s hands on him the night before. 

Richie lifts a brow. “Are you trying to get me all hot and bothered, babe?”

Eddie blushes not from of the question, but the ‘babe’. He swallows and says, “Maybe I just want you to brush your teeth.”

He drops an open-mouthed kiss a hairbreadth away from his nipple. “I think I can do quite a bit without needing to.”

His eyes are bright and teasing like they’ve been them so many times before, but it’s different now. Their bare skin is touching at nearly every point, warm and soft and exposed. The inside of Richie’s knee is pressed loosely to Eddie’s thigh. His forearm is laying against his ribcage. And after two decades of denying himself at every turn, it apparently doesn’t take very much to get Eddie going.

He wants nothing more in this moment than to pin Richie to the mattress and kiss him for all he’s worth.

Eddie tugs Richie forward by his hair, making his eyes roll back in his head in a way that makes Eddie’s stomach flip.

“Richie.” Eddie’s lips brush the shelf of his ear. “Brush your fucking teeth.”

He’s immediately nodding. “Yes, right. Can do, babe.”

Eddie blushes again as Richie hops out of bed.

He leans out the bathroom door, toothpaste in hand. “You coming?”

Eddie grins and shoves the blankets off.

Richie stays at Eddie’s the whole weekend, and when he gets back Monday morning with a grin a mile wide, Clara’s the only one to guess it right.

“Your little friend?” she whispers before class.

“Don’t tell anybody,” Richie says, kind of scared but kind of not. 

She squeezes his elbow, a rare physical touch outside of choreographed dances and their ill-advised kiss. “I’ll just tell _ you _—I told you so.” She walks away, tossing over her shoulder, “And that smile is obnoxious.”

He and Eddie go right back to hours-long daily phone calls like they never stopped. Twice, Richie gets a call from another loser in the middle of talking to Eddie, and he puts Eddie on hold just long enough to tell the other person “I made up with Eddie, I got him on the other line, talk to you later, bye!” before returning to him. 

The next weekend, Richie has a theatre thing on Friday, so he would’ve had to leave for Eddie’s Saturday morning, but in a stroke of luck, Jordan’s away visiting family, so Eddie can just come over. He hangs around the house with Lucas while he waits, and when Richie gets home at 8, they order pizza and then fool around on Richie’s bed before falling asleep together.

The whole thing is pretty fucking choice, honestly.

Hanging out with Eddie is largely the same as before, dumb jokes and winding conversations, but the fluttering tension in Richie’s throat every time he so much looked at Eddie is transformed to a giddy weightlessness. Also they kiss a lot more.

But the next day, instead of having fun, they’re doing homework on Richie’s bed, leaning against the wall with their sides lined up neatly with each other’s. Eddie’s taking notes from a real textbook, and Richie’s trying to memorize a partner scene he’s presenting on Monday, but it’s hard to do with Eddie chewing on his highlighter cap so distractingly.

Richie’s about to suggest a study break when there’s a knock on the door.

Richie jumps, although they hadn’t even been making out, and he’d locked the door, so even when Lucas tries to walk right in, he’s blocked.

He slides off the bed and answers the door. “Why knock if you’re just gonna walk right in?”

“Politeness?” Lucas offers.

“You can’t just walk into my room, dude,” Richie says firmly. 

He’s pretty sure he could convince Lucas of any random lie even if he _ had _ walked in on them hooking up, but Richie’s heart is still thumping in his throat.

He nods, shooting him finger guns. “Greatest of apologies, my man. Can I have some of your peanut butter?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Richie goes to close the door, but then swings it open again. “Wait—for eating or for experiments?”

Lucas had fucked up the communal ketchup in ways they still hadn’t gotten over.

“Ayy, you got me there. I read this thing on the ‘net about—”

“Peanut butter only for eating,” Richie interrupts.

“Got it,” Lucas says. “Hey Eddie, what’s up?”

“Hey Lucas.” He waves from Richie’s bed. “Just doing homework.”

“Ah, yeah. The grind never stops.” Lucas leans against the doorway like he’s gonna stay a while, and Richie tries to reel in the glare he wants to send him. “You know Jordan’s saying he might not re-sign the lease.”

Richie crosses his arms. “Good. If he does, I won’t.”

He nods. “Lotta variables at play here.”

“I’m not a math guy, but it feels like that’s only two variables.”

“You are a math guy,” Eddie pipes up. “You just decided to do theatre instead.”

Richie throws a wink at him over his shoulder. “True. Thanks, babe.” 

Which was a slip of the tongue, he didn’t mean to call Eddie that in front of Lucas, but it’s not _ too _ wild of thing to come out of Richie’s mouth.

Lucas isn’t paying attention anyway. “I’ll talk to my bio buddies, see what they’re doing next year—“

“Yeah whatever,” Richie says. “Go eat my peanut butter.”

“Oh, yeah! Thanks.” And he finally leaves.

Richie locks his door and hops back on the bed with Eddie. He gives him a kiss that he tries to deepen, but Eddie pulls back with a whine.

“Just let me finish this chapter.”

“And then?” Richie asks expectantly.

“I was actually thinking—“

“With that big sexy brain of yours?”

His lips twist with a smile. “Uh huh. So I haven’t told any of the losers yet, and I assume based off the lack of excited phone calls from Bev, you haven’t either?”

“Nah, I told them we’d made up or whatever,” Richie says. “But I just went through coming out to everybody individually, I kinda wanted to knock this one out all at once. With you there. As proof.”

If Eddie wants to tell them. Richie’s not sure—he hasn’t asked, for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of their new relationship—exactly how Eddie feels about people _ knowing _ he’s with a guy.

Eddie laughs. “You think they’ll need proof?”

“Half of them thought I was joking when I came out, you need to back me up on this.”

“It just makes sense to tell them all together anyway,” Eddie says like it’s never occurred to him to keep Richie a secret. “So like I was saying, since there’s two phones here, I figure we can three-way call four of them, and Bev’s visiting Ben, so we can just...” He waves a hand through the air.

“You’re so smart. You and your hot brain.” He grabs Eddie’s head and bites at Eddie’s skull.

“Ow!” Eddie shoves him away with a laugh. “Why are you so weird?”

He flings his arms wide. “Must be the love!”

“Love makes you weird?”

“Love makes you all sorts of things, Eddie, my dear,” and then he pushes him back on the mattress and helps Eddie forget all about the chapter he’s supposed to finish.

After a minor diversion which leaves them both breathing heavily, Eddie nabs the home phone from the living room and they make their calls to the losers.

They’re all very supportive, but not very surprised, which leaves Richie a little miffed. Everyone had known Richie and Eddie were like this, but nobody had told them? What gives? 

(The fact that Richie would’ve had a meltdown if anybody suggested they liked each other before he was ready to admit it is _ not _ the point.)

Stan jokes dryly about how no one had seen this coming, after Richie’s coming out tour and their week of radio silence after they started talking again. So that’s part of it—they’d all had the chance to put two and two together already.

But Mike seems to be fitting the puzzle pieces together in the moment, because he says, “_ Now _ it makes sense. Everything makes so much sense now.”

Which Richie takes to mean that Eddie and him make sense together.

And Richie likes that a lot.

Richie visits Eddie as often as possible. If he thought he couldn’t get enough of Eddie before, it’s nothing compared to their new relationship level of kissing near-constantly.

They’re side by side on Eddie’s bed, and Richie’s glasses are off, which means they’re firmly in the hot and heavy end of things, though their pants have always remained on. They don’t let that stop them.

Richie hooks a leg over Eddie’s hip to straddle him.

As he kisses down Eddie’s throat, Eddie squeezes his bicep and tells him, “I wanna be on top.”

“Okay.” He presses an open-mouthed kiss to his pulse point. 

Eddie arches his chest to get Richie to move, but he doesn’t oblige, just continues his very important business of getting his lips all over Eddie’s neck. Eddie kicks his leg a bit, trying to flip them over, but Richie easily keeps him in position.

“Well, are you gonna help me that?” 

“Um…” Richie hums like he’s thinking. He nips Eddie’s earlobe. “No.”

So Eddie bucks up to make Richie roll over, but that makes their hips meet, so Richie groans and presses back down. With Richie distracted, Eddie heaves forward again, and they roll so far that they land on the floor with a soft thud. 

Richie gets flipped onto his back by a determined Eddie, but Richie’s mostly focused on keeping the friction of their hips going. So Eddie gets no fight as he closes his fingers around Richie’s wrists to pin him down. 

“There,” Eddie pants, grinning smugly. Hot, so hot. Does he know how hot he is?

Richie gets comfortable on the floor, happily giving up control. He wriggles his brows. “Well, Eddie, what’re gonna do with me now that you’ve got me?”

Eddie just now seems to notice the position he’s put them in, and his eyes light with a spark that Richie’s slowly falling in love with. “Oh, I’ve got some ideas.”

One weekend, Richie takes Eddie out on a kind-of-date where they don’t touch at all in the restaurant because they’re still very nervous about the being gay in public thing.

“You didn’t have to pay for me,” Eddie says as they walk home from a ramen place a few blocks from his dorm.

“Please, I’m nothing if not a gentleman,” Richie says, hand to his chest in faux offense. “I pay for all my dates’ meals.”

“All your many dates, huh?”

He grabs Eddie hand and spins him like they’re dancing, making Eddie laugh. “I’ll have you know I’ve been on at least two other dates.”

“At least two? Like you forgot, or…?”

“Like, I was counting this third outing as a date, but then she insisted on paying for herself and never called me again, so I dunno.”

“Sounds like three dates, one of which was very bad.”

“I’ll agree to that.” He throws an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and keeps it there. They’d walked like this before they were dating, so it should be safe. “Am I improving? How’s this date going?”

“Well I’m bringing you home with me, so I guess pretty well.”

Richie grins wide, and Eddie sways in closer but then stops, biting his lip. It’s okay. They’ll be home soon, and then Eddie can kiss him all he wants.

“And you?” Richie picks up their conversation. “Never dipped a toe into the ole college dating pool?”

Eddie shakes his head, cheeks burning under a street lamp. “There was this one really pushy girl in my first year stats class, but she reminded me so much of my mom I couldn’t even look at her.”

“Yikes. Bullet dodged.”

A man and a woman walk past them on the campus path holding hands, and Richie stiffens a little, but they don’t give him and Eddie a second glance. 

He checks over his shoulder to see if anyone else is near, and when nobody is, he lowers his voice and says, “So, out of curiosity, do you, like, identify or whatever as gay?” Eddie looks up at him. “That’s not supposed to be a dumb question—it’s just that I had a whole… _ thing _ about coming out, and I dunno if you did too?”

“Um.” Eddie reaches out like he’s gonna curl his hand in Richie’s shirt, but drops it. “I was talking to Colby about it.”

“Right.” 

They’d hung out with Colby a few times, in between homework and making out on Eddie’s mega bed (they’d finally pushed the spare bed against Eddie’s). Colby is still super cool, and very happy for them.

“Well he—” Eddie checks that they’re alone as well, as though they’re doing a drug deal and not just talking about their life. “He’s bi, right? And that’s why he kept reaching out in the first place—he thought I was a sad, friendless gay and felt bad for me. When I told him I wasn’t, that I didn’t know—” He rolls his eyes, more frustrated than anything. “One of the many complexes my mom gave me, y’know?”

Richie gives him a comforting squeeze. “Yeah.”

“Colby said I could just be with who I wanted to be with, and that was enough.” He raises his brows, dark eyes wide. “If that’s alright?”

“Dude, yeah, that’s all you. Better than whatever the fuck I thought I needed to do.”

“I _ know.” _Eddie tugs on his hand to make his point. “I’ve been talking to everybody else so much lately, and maybe you came up a few times—you’ve been freaking out. And then I just wanna defer deciding for myself? It feels like cheating.”

Richie shakes his head. “No.”

“No? That’s it?”

“Eds, I know you.” 

He knows Eddie’s been scared of catching AIDs since before he knew what sex was, and his mom didn’t like Eddie on the track team because she thought the male coach was staring at Eddie in those little shorts, and she never let him join Boy Scouts because she was paranoid about what all the boys would get up to unsupervised in tents, and a million other things she was very, very vocally (incorrectly) worried about. And that wasn’t even getting into all the other shit Derry put on them. 

Richie meets his eye outside Eddie’s dorm, and he knows he doesn’t need to say any of it. 

He just says, “It’s not easy. That’s okay. We love each other, right?”

Eddie nods fervently. 

“Then that’s it.”

He looks up at him with such awed fondness that Richie almost can’t take it. It’s like looking directly at the sun.

“I’m really lucky, you know,” Eddie says like it’s a special secret.

He raises his brows. “Because you have me?” he guesses, a little incredulously.

“Uh huh.” He smiles, small and sweet and just for him. “Now get inside so I can kiss you.”

Richie feels greedy whenever they’re together—greedy for Eddie’s hands on him, for his smile on his mouth, for his sweet words to fill his ears.

“You look fucking ridiculous,” Eddie says, pulling back to breathe.

They’d started making out on the floor in the middle of playing video games, so Richie’s back is against the spare bed and Eddie is in his lap, which is always a good position.

Eddie drags a hand through Richie’s hair, only making it more wild, and smirks at his half-lidded eyes behind his glasses, his red mouth hanging open.

Richie thumbs over Eddie’s swollen bottom lip. And Eddie lets him. Richie’s not ever going to get tired of that. “You look cute.”

His pouts against Richie’s thumb, so it’s more of an unintentional kiss. “How am I making you groan like this and you’re still calling me cute?”

He makes a good point. Eddie, in his shirt hiked halfway up his chest, blush high in his cheeks, little shorts stretched over his muscled things closing in either side of Richie’s legs—he deserves a much stronger description than cute.

“Sorry, poor choice of words.” Richie grabs his hips and grinds hard against him through their clothes. “You look fucking criminal.”

Eddie makes a pathetic attempt at a slap against Richie’s chest, but the breathy _ ‘ugh’ _ he releases relays his true feelings.

“_You’re _ the criminal,” Eddie accuses, curling his hands in Richie’s shirt to yank him back in.

He meets Eddie’s eyes, almost too close to see. “Because I stole your heart?”

Eddie hums, pressing his lips to his. “Stole my breath away.”

“You stole my joke.”

He flattens his palms on his chest. “What if I steal this shirt right off you?”

“Then you’d be the cutest criminal in the world.”

It’s late on a Sunday, and Richie’s staying the night to get the train back Monday morning instead of going home to sleep by himself. 

“Would it be weird if I thanked you?” Richie asks.

They’re wrapped up on Eddie’s mega bed with the intention of going to sleep, but they keep opening their eyes to look at each other. It’s dark, and quiet, and they’re completely alone.

Eddie brushes a lock of hair from Richie’s forehead. “For what?”

“For being as into me as I’m into you.”

“Richie, I’ve been into you since seventh grade.”

“Well you should’ve said something.”

“_You _ should’ve said something,” Eddie retorts.

“I mean, I made the first move. I kissed you first, so—”

Eddie interrupts Richie with a slow, soft kiss. “Isn’t it amazing I can do that to shut you up now? I finally found an off button.”

“Eds, I am so far from being turned off when I’m with you.”

He groans at the bad joke, but he’s smiling. He’s been smiling a lot, where before he’d keep up the facade of being annoyed or grossed out. He still does that, but then Richie will tug on his hand or poke his cheek and pull the true reaction out of him.

“You can be honest more often, you know,” Eddie says.

“What? About being turned on?” He squeezes his ass. “I think I’m pretty open about that.”

“You’re an idiot.” But he kisses him again. “What I mean is, if we’d said what we were actually feeling sooner, maybe getting together would’ve been less of a production.”

“Us? Make _ less _ of a production? Not carry on, avoid causing a ruckus? You think we could’ve done that?” he asks incredulously.

He glares at him, but there’s no heat behind it. “Not when you put it like that. But now everything is out in the open, right? So we can just say what we want? Without having to dilute it with humour.”

“I feel like that’s a call out specifically for me.”

“I make jokes, too,” he argues.

“You’re right, you’re the funniest person I know.”

“Shut up,” he scoffs.

Richie laughs. He rolls over far enough to grab his glasses off the bedside table, because if they’re gonna have a conversation, he wants to see. “Hey, if I go to the effort of saying something honest, _ you’re _ the one who has to take it seriously.”

Eddie grabs the hand Richie’s using to point at him with and tucks it between their chests. “You’re right. You _ have _ literally always been calling me cute. Maybe I should’ve gotten the hint earlier.”

Except those weren’t hints. They were the only way Richie could express affection because he knew nobody would take him seriously. It would’ve been the end of the world if someone called him out on it.

“What would you have done?” Richie asks.

“Huh?”

“If you thought I liked you back in high school? Because if _ I _ thought I’d liked you back then, I would’ve, like, combusted.”

“If I didn’t figure out you liked me when we were kissing, I was never gonna fucking get it. I can’t even imagine…” Eddie shakes his head. “I probably would’ve freaked out because it meant I liked you too.”

“So like… what did you pretend was happening?” Richie asks. “If we’re being honest about stuff.” 

He’d refrained from delving too deep into Eddie’s road to self-discovery, especially since Eddie was apparently still travelling on it with the whole being gay thing. But also because Richie’s been tentative to upset this precarious new thing between them. But they’ve been together a month now, and their relationship doesn’t feel delicate, like a stray sigh could tip it over. It feels like they can tell each other anything, just like Eddie wants.

“Obviously I was seven layers deep in repression and denial about… everything,” Richie adds. “But what about you?”

Eddie hums. He plays with Richie’s fingers, as he tends to do while he’s thinking. “Well, most of the time I didn’t even try to figure it out. How was I supposed to make sense of you?”

“Wow,” he says flatly.

He smiles, a brightness in the dark. “But with how _ I _ was feeling, I guess I had myself convinced it some sort of illness.”

“What, like Richie Fever?”

“Shut _ up _.” He rolls his eyes. “But yes, like a fever. Or heart burn, or cardiac arrest.”

“Is that why you stopped eating pizza junior year?”

“Yes!” He slaps his chest. “Why do you remember that?”

“You made us get you a fucking salad whenever we ordered pizza for like six months. It was annoying.”

“It didn’t help, either.”

“No shit.”

Eddie grabs his skull and smacks a kiss on his forehead. “Can I tell you something else?” he asks from within Richie’s unruly hair.

“Always.”

He releases a breath through his nose, and it trickles down Richie’s bare back. He’s more somber when he continues, “My mom had me convinced there was something wrong with me, right? So not liking girls like the rest of you had to be part of it.”

Richie hugs him tight around the ribs. Eddie squeezes Richie’s head to his chest.

“When Bev showed up,” Eddie continues softly, “I almost understood why you guys were always talking about girls, because she’s so fucking cool. And she was actually nice to us. But I still didn’t wanna kiss her.” Eddie noses at his curls. “Just you.”

“Did that scare you?”

“Yeah.”

“You never told me.”

“What was I supposed to say?”

Which is probably the only valid response to that question. How were either of them supposed to be honest with each other in Derry?

“I don’t know,” Richie admits. “I just hate that we were freaking out about the same thing for so long and we didn’t—talk. We could’ve helped each other.”

Eddie pulls back so he’s looking at him again. “You think you didn’t help me? I don’t know how I would’ve gotten out of Derry without you.”

“Says the guy who literally filled out my college application for me.”

“You were never staying in Derry, school or not.” Then Eddie sighs heavily. “My mom—without you, all you guys—I swear she would’ve sucked the life right out of me.”

Luckily, Eddie _ did _ have friends, because Richie never would’ve let that happen to him.

Richie thumbs over his cheekbone. “Yeah, well—I guess you helped me, too. Because wondering if I was gay has always been like grinding teeth, but caring for you?” His voice trembles, but Eddie deserves to know. “It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Eddie cups his face, and Richie closes his eyes for just a second, because he swears the way Eddie’s eyes shine is powered by pure unfiltered love, and it can’t be safe to be exposed to that kind of raw emotion.

Eddie presses a soft kiss to his cheek. “To answer your question, I don’t think it would be weird to thank me, but you don’t need to. Because I’m so fucking grateful every day for you, Rich. That you’re here, that you came out, that you said how you felt—because _ god _, we both know how scary it is to want something so badly that you don’t think you should want.”

Richie’s breath leaves him in a shudder. Sometimes Eddie shocks him with how well he knows him, right down to his bones.

“I’m still scared sometimes,” Richie admits in the safety of the dark, wrapped in Eddie’s arms. Scared of homophobes seeing them together, terrified of clowns returning after Richie’s finally made peace with himself, overwhelmed by the feelings always clawing at his chest. 

“Me too,” Eddie says. “But my love’s bigger than the fear.”

Richie’s grin is a little wobbly, but it’s so fucking wide. “Yeah. Mine is too, Eds.”

Finally he’s got something stronger than fear, stronger than shame or confusion or guilt. He’s got all this love he gets to share with the one person it’s always been for.

Eddie trails his fingers along Richie’s jaw, drawing him closer until their lips meet. Richie closes his eyes, and melts into the love that Eddie offers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we are! A few things:  
\- I'm [katranga](http://katranga.tumblr.com) on tumblr as well, if you wanna say hi. Also, here's a [post to reblog](https://katranga.tumblr.com/post/190356497698/kisses-taste-like-mint-1414-it) for this fic, if that's your thing.  
\- This work is now part of a series, so subscribe to that if you wanna be notified when I start posting the sequel! It's about Eddie moving in with Richie for the summer, so they're living together in New York! Because fuuuck long distance! It's similar to the epilogue, so it's mostly fluff, with some feelings-y conversations (and maybe a lil smut). Is it at all necessary? No, but I got real carried away writing about them being happy. First chap will probably be up in a few weeks.  
\- I've also got that other fic in the works about reddie meeting up before IT Chapter 2 and hooking up without remembering each other, which I'll probably post the first chap of before I get into the sequel, so keep an eye out for that  
Okay, I think that's it! Lemme know what your thoughts!


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